The Case of the Disappearing Librarians: Analyzing Documentation of Librarians’ Contributions to Systematic Reviews

Objectives: The study aimed to analyze the documented role of a librarian in published systematic reviews and meta-analyses whose protocols mentioned librarian involvement. The intention was to identify how, or if, librarians’ work was formally documented, how their contributions were described, and how other metrics correlated with this documentation.

Methods: Publications with PROSPERO protocols registered in 2017 and 2018 that specifically mentioned a librarian were reviewed. These publications were analyzed for documentation of the librarian’s work, including authorship status, mentions in the body of the paper, or mentions in the acknowledgements. Language used to describe the librarian and their work was gathered and coded in terms of what type of work was described and how it was described. Additional information collected included the title of the journal, number of authors on the paper, mentions of systematic review software, and details of the search strategy.

Results: The majority of the reviews, 78%, mentioned the contributions of a librarian within the body of the paper, 44% named a librarian in the acknowledgements section, and 28% listed a librarian as an author. In 31% no librarian was mentioned by name, and in 9% no reference to a librarian was found at all. Language about librarians’ contributions usually only specified work with search strategy development, and did not mention other contributions. Publications with librarian co-authors typically described the work of the librarian in active voice that centered the librarian, while publications without a librarian co-author usually did not.

Conclusions: Even among this set of reviews, where librarian involvement was specified at the protocol level, librarians’ contributions were often described with minimal, or even no, language in the final publication.