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Ekstrom Library

Research Assistance & Instruction

About Scholar Services

Scholar Services builds collaborative and embedded relationships with researchers across academic disciplines by providing expert guidance and support for all aspects of the research lifecycle.

More About Scholar Services

 

We align library resources with UofL faculty, staff, and graduate student needs. Our goal is to propel UofL’s research agenda by helping scholars at all levels conduct and disseminate research, as well as evaluate the impact and value of their research on a global scale.

Acceptance of a request is dependent on the research timeline and our availability. Delivery times may vary but will be communicated at the start and throughout the engagement. We may request an in-person or virtual consultations to better understand your request.

For faculty and staff, we will prioritize supporting specific research needs.

For graduate students, we focus on teaching research skills.

Jumpstart Advanced Literature Search

We can help you jumpstart your research project by providing 15-20 preliminary articles related to your topic within a minimum of 2-3 weeks depending on librarian availability. We can also recommend keywords and databases to continue your search. For graduate students, we will meet with you to help you find sources. Any researcher can meet with us to discuss advanced literature search strategies.

Contact Courtney Shareef with questions about jumpstart literature searches. 

Systematic Review Consultation and Collaboration

Systematic reviews are methodical, comprehensive, and reproducible literature syntheses focus on a well-formulated research question. We can consult and collaborate with you on systematic reviews, scoping reviews, rapid reviews, and more.

We will guide and collaborate with graduate students, faculty, and staff to:

  • Choose the best review methodology that fits the research topic, timeline, and discipline.
  • Identify relevant databases to search and evaluate existing scholarship and gray literature.
  • Design and implement effective, database-specific search strategies.
  • Use Covidence, a systematic review manager, for article screening and selection.

We strongly recommended you include the librarians who write the search methodology section of the synthesis as a co-author. Librarians who collaborate on search strategy formation and/or citation management should be acknowledged in the final publication.

For graduate students, we focus on teaching research skills that will enable students to successfully reach their research and evidence synthesis goals

Some of the evidence synthesis methodologies, like systematic reviews, are long-term, and often intense research projects. We will work with you to determine the best methodology for your research project and your timeline.

Contact Latisha Reynolds with questions about systematic reviews/evidence synthesis. 

Research Impact Reports

Research impact metrics help demonstrate the value and impact of your scholarship. You can use these metrics for CVs, tenure and promotion materials, grant applications, and personal and research group websites in conjunction with qualitative measures and expert judgement. 

We can create research impact reports for individuals, research groups, or departments using a variety of metrics including: 

  • Publication citation counts
  • Journal impact factors
  • Author H-index
  • Altmetrics

Research impact reports take approximately two weeks.

Contact Tessa Withorn with questions about research impact. 

Data Management

Data management practices help you effectively gather, store, and analyze data throughout the research process. Collecting and storing your data in a consistent, accurate, and complete way, and including your datasets and metadata in searchable repositories: 

  • Increases your data quality and reproducibility
  • Meets funder requirements
  • Increases the visbility of your data

 

We can help you: 

  • Review data management plans
  • Find metadata standards
  • Find data repositories 
  • Find data for reuse

Contact Tessa Withorn, Belknap Data Services Coordinator, or Dani LaPerez, Health Science Campus Data Services Coordinator, with questions about data management. 

Citation Management

Citation management tools expediate the research process by organizing and generating citations. We support EndNote, a subscription-based citation manager free to UofL students, faculty, and staff, and Zotero, a free citation manager. With citation managers, you can: 

  • Create and organize a library of a variety of sources (i.e., articles, books, webpages, etc.) by importing citation information from library databases
  • Share your library with collaborators
  • Format citations in various citation styles (e.g., APA, MLA, journal-specific styles)
  • Insert in-text and reference list citations in Microsoft Word

You can meet with a librarian about citation management, and the UofL Libraries provide citation management workshops throughout the year.