LibGuides
LibGuides
The Evidence Support Team offers a literature search service to all members, fellows and staff at RCS England. Our Information Specialists can perform a search on your behalf, or support you to conduct your own search. Our literature search service is designed to help support clinical practice, help you with any research you may be carrying out or to support professional activities and projects within the College.
Please note, where a literature search is requested for educational purposes (e.g. for an assessed piece of work as part of a masters or PhD) we cannot carry out this search on your behalf but can offer one-to-one training and support.
A quick search will provide you with 5-10 good quality, relevant references to answer a simple or focused question. Quick searches are good for finding the most up-to-date information on a topic such as the most recent systematic reviews or high-quality evidence on your topic.
Particularly useful to support: Posters, presentations, keeping up-to-date, getting started with a topic.
Examples of quick search requests:
Comprehensive searches are good for more complex clinical questions, questions with a wide scope, or questions where you would like to gather a wide range of relevant references. An Information Specialist will search a variety of relevant sources (typically including MEDLINE and Embase) using a complex search strategy. We will then remove duplicates and exclude any irrelevant results according to inclusion and exclusion criteria you have provided us with.
Particularly useful to support: Research, publication, service development, or gathering the evidence base to inform a project or decision.
Examples of comprehensive search requests:
Searches to support systematic review seek to identify all the existing evidence on a specific research question. Systematic review searches include advanced searches of MEDLINE, Embase and other relevant sources conducted by an Information Specialist. Please note that Information Specialists will not screen systematic review search results for eligibility, although we will remove duplicates.
Particularly useful to support: Systematic or scoping reviews, guideline development.
Examples of Searches to support systematic review:
Staff at RCS England can request a bespoke staff search. These are particularly useful if you are looking to gather information in a non-standard way. Staff are also welcome to request any of the search types offered to members (Quick, Comprehensive, Search to support systematic review).
Staff may request a literature search for a variety of reasons. These include:
Examples of literature searches for staff:
To request that we undertake a literature search on your behalf, please fill in the relevant web form from the below options.
Please note that we cannot perform a literature search where the purpose is for a course related project or assignment. We can however offer you a tailored one-to-one training session where we can guide you through your search.
If you want to conduct your own search, or are undertaking a search for educational purposes, we can support you in a variety of ways. We offer:
To book an appointment or request a peer review, please contact us at evidencesupport@rcseng.ac.uk
To make an enquiry or book an appointment email: evidencesupport@rcseng.ac.uk
We will endeavour to reply to you as soon as possible. Please note we do not work weekends or bank holidays.
General library enquiries, including research enquiries:
library@rcseng.ac.uk 020 7869 6555
Online journal and resource enquiries:
library.athens@rcseng.ac.uk 020 7869 6556
© 2022 The Royal College of Surgeons of England
38-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE
Tel: +44 (0)20 7405 3474
Registered Charity no: 212808
Privacy Policy | Cookies Policy