The project follows the protocol published in CRIStin (ID: 536409).
Selection of databases and search terms:
We will search for research articles in the following electronic bibliographic databases: LISTA, Web of Science, ERIC, and the most important databases within specific disciplines, f.ex Medline. Sources include reference lists of included studies and review articles. The search terms include subject headings and free text words. They will be adapted for use with other bibliographic databases. No language restrictions or time limit.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria:
Concept 1: We include research support given by librarians or library or information specialists in academic and research libraries. Excluded are studies on public libraries or school libraries
Concept 2: We include studies which cover all or part of the research life cycle. We include different ways of support: for example courses for researchers, online tutorials, face-to-face, one-on-one-sessions. Also studies on collaboration or embedded librarianship will be included, and studies on human resources, but we exclude studies primarily on physical space in the library
Excluded: - studies on general library services which the library offers any user or internal library routines, like: interlibrary loan, licencing, access, collection development - studies on trends and challenges - studies on competencegiving measures for librarians
Concept 3: Inclusion: studies on researchers in academic institutions, doctoral students (PhD-students), clinicians, (many university libraries serve their affiliated hospitals), librarians /information specialists.
We exclude studies about Bachelor students, Master students, patients, public
We will include all type of studies, both quantitative and qualitative studies. Excluded: anecdotical studies
Data extraction (selecting and coding): Titles and/or abstracts of studies retrieved using the search strategy and those from additional sources will be
screened independently by at least two review authors to identify studies that potentially meet the inclusion criteria outlined above. The full text of these potentially eligible studies will be retrieved and independently assessed for
eligibility by all review team members. Any disagreement between them over the eligibility of particular studies will be resolved through discussion. We will use EndNote and Rayyan. Data from the included studies will be extracted for
assessment of study quality. In addition to author, title and source, extracted information may include: study setting;stage of the research cycle; details of the library support; study methodology; outcomes and times of measurement; information for assessment of the risk of bias. The review authors will extract data independently, discrepancies will be identified and resolved through discussion.
Risk of bias (quality) assessment: Two of the authors will assess the relevance of the studies. Consensus by discussion. Quality assessment of studies: We expect studies with different study design. Therefore the risk of bias in the included studies will be assessed by important domains as design, conduct, analysis and reporting.
Strategy for data synthesis: We will provide a descriptive synthesis of the findings from the included studies, structured around the common themes. We will provide summaries of interventions and outcome effects for each study. We anticipate that there will be limited scope for meta-analysis because of the range of different outcomes measured.
Analysis of subgroups or subsets: We expect to find subgroups in the material. Possible subgroups can be on these categories, but there could be others: Type of library, Users, Purposes, Outcome.
