Methodology for selecting publications for scientific reviews

Abstract

The task of searching and selecting publications for scientific reviews is located on the intersection of science and art. The increasing publication flow has made it all harder to reveal relevant and important papers for scientific community. The methodological approach being described enables to organize selecting publications for reviews while decreasing accidental mistakes and subjective declinations; it is to structure primary selection with its further expansion, reduction and analysis, that can be accomplished in several iterations resulting in the final selection, its analytical features and formalized protocol. The authors describe the method structure and provide the example for the subject “embedded librarian”. This example demonstrates the advantages of the approach as compared to the traditional search by keywords: various variants of search strategies are applicable; their repeatability and exhaustiveness of resulted selection. The method can be applied in academic and sci-tech libraries to develop their services supporting science and research.