Engaging medical librarians to improve the quality of review articles.

Review articles published in JAMA summarize various aspects of medical practice and are written by known authorities. An expert’s opinion about a topic has value, but often more can be learned by that expert’s assessment of all the pertinent literature. When reading individual research articles, readers could miss subtle features of the studies that are more apparent to an expert clinicianresearcher. Readers benefit from the expert’s explanation of the validity and applicability of individual studies. When authors summarize the literature, a natural tendency is to select articles supporting their views. To minimize this potential for bias, JAMA editors ask authors to systematically review the literature and comment on as much of it as is practical. Extensive literature searches can be difficult to perform, given the complexity of the search process and authors’ time constraints. It is also unlikely that a content expert will be familiar with the intricacies of more than one database. Empirical evidence provides a strong rationale for searching multiple databases. 1,2 For this reason, collaborating with medical librarians is recommended when writing review articles. A general approach for this collaboration is presented in the Box. Preliminary searches conducted by a librarian can help refine the question and determine its feasibility and scope. These initial screening searches can also inform the development of the review’s prospective inclusion and exclusion criteria. The choice of database depends on several factors. Most important is the content (topic)