Levels of librarian support and how to credit
Much of the work a librarian does to assist researchers falls under their everyday job responsibilities. However, systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and meta-analyses, often require greater librarian involvement and include the librarian as a partner in the research project. When these levels of assistance lead to a published paper, it is appropriate to credit the librarian.
With this in mind, librarians can offer 3 basic levels of support:
- Uncredited - regular librarian work
- Overview of review process and best practices
- Identifying keywords and databases
- Recommending tools
- Single consultation
- Acknowledgement or Contributor note
- Troubleshooting search strategy
- Data management consultation
- Help registering Protocol
- More than one consultation
- Authorship (one or more of the following)
- Using search strategy or filter developed by librarian
- Help registering a protocol
- Citation retrieval and management
- Hand searching for articles
- Assisting with paper's methods section
- Section edits