Renewed and Refreshed: reflections on a systematic review guide and protocol development experience using DMPTool

Background: A systematic review guide can be a helpful tool for faculty and students who are undertaking these projects. Our guide contained useful information about the steps in the process, data management tools, database tutorials, and a consultation form. Two years post implementation, we saw a need to update our systematic review guide. In the new guide we wanted to highlight resources that our librarians had developed in support of systematic reviews including workshops and a protocol development tool.

Description: Our goal was to create a guide based on user orientated tasks. In our previous guide much of the main content was buried under steps in the systematic review process. We wanted to bring that content to the homepage and use action-oriented statements to steer users quickly to the needed information. Concurrently, we designed a novel approach to protocol developing using DMPTool. Using the PRISMA-P extension, we developed a DMPTool template that can be used as a teaching modality. DMPTool allows for hints, descriptions, and links to be embedded into the template. These features allow for students to explore the concepts of systematic reviews and ultimately produce a protocol. These protocols are both educational and productive since a PDF can be created and then submitted to registries.

Conclusion: The redesign of the guide and the launch of the DMPTool template allows for the librarians to provide an asynchronous learning experience, while saving time. The guide gave faculty members quick access to standard resources for conducting systematic reviews. These tools allow for more hands-on and productive meetings with students who are first encountering review methodologies.