Evidence Summaries

Here is an example of an evidence summary that was published with the SRJ

Evidence summaries offer a concise, analytical summary of an article, providing an overview of the best available evidence on a defined question, and indicate where existing knowledge would benefit from further research. Evidence Summaries require students to write with concision within a defined structure and evaluate the quality of a study, providing a useful summary of important research and suggestions for its use in practice.

To encourage the submission of evidence summaries to the SRJ, support materials were developed by editorial team members Claire Goldstein, Stephanie Akau, Stacy Andell, Priscilla Ameneyro, Lisa Lowdermilk, and Rob King, under the guidance of Managing Editor, Kelly Pollard.

A special thank you to Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) who created these author guidelines. EBLIP encourages students to consider submitting Evidence Summaries to EBLIP for publication, post-graduation.

Source Quality/Significance

  • Work summarized is current (published within 3 years), is topically relevant to the scope of the journal, and does not duplicate existing evidence summaries.

Length

  • Evidence summaries should be between 550 and 1100 words

Contents:

  • Evidence summaries follow a specific format and contain each of the following:
    • A descriptive title of fewer than 25 words, with no subtitle. Avoid beginning the title with such phrases as “research demonstrates that…” or “study concludes…” EBLIP suggests including one of the following elements in the title: population, setting (geographic region), methodology (only if unique), important findings/conclusion(s).
    • Citation for the article being reviewed. Use APA format and include the DOI if available. If the DOI is not available, use a stable URL.
    • Reviewer’s name and contract information. Please remove with initial submission, and re-insert once accepted for publication.
    • A brief and accurate Structured Abstract, which summarizes information from the research article to support the statement made in the descriptive title, provides a description of the main points of the study without additional analysis. It is between 200 and 700 words and includes each of the following components:
      • Objective – The objective of the study in one or two sentences.
      • Design – Type of research study design used. This does not need to be a full sentence, e.g., a survey questionnaire, an observational study, a randomized controlled trial
      • Setting – Environment and geographic region in which the research took place. This does not need to be a full sentence, e.g., a large public library in San Jose, California, a law information center in the United States,
      • Do not provide the specific name of the institution or organization. The setting is provided to help the reader determine if they can use the research for their purposes.
      • Subjects – The number and characteristics of the subjects/participants/respondents in the study. This does not need to be a full sentence, e.g., 75 senior citizens who were homebound. For subjects, the exception to the rule of beginning sentences with a numeral is made. Especially for surveys, note that “subjects” and “respondents” are not equivalent (e.g., a survey is distributed to 100 subjects, but only 83 respond by completing the survey).
      • Methods – A brief paragraph on the research methodology. Do not restate the design, setting, or subjects, from above.
      • Main Results – State the main outcome(s) of the research study, e.g., e-books were preferred two to one over print books by young adults participating in the focus group. This should be a few sentences, possibly a paragraph.
      • Conclusion – State the conclusion and practice implications for this research study (as reported by the study authors), e.g., Based on the research results, signage in the library was improved and replaced. A follow-up study will be conducted to further examine the impact of the change.
    • Commentary – The Commentary is meant to provide the Evidence Summary writer with the opportunity to critique the original research study and report and suggest further implications for practice. The suggested word count is 350 to 450 words.
      • The first paragraph should place the research/article in the wider context of research available on this topic. Writers are encouraged to include citations to the literature and previous studies to support statements made in this paragraph.
      • The next several paragraphs should address the strength of the evidence presented. Writers should refer to a critical appraisal checklist or tool, and include a citation to it, to ensure all important elements of assessment have been taken into consideration.
      • The commentary section should not restate the main results or conclusions of the study. It should provide a balanced and fair critical appraisal of the important elements of the methodology that impact the reliability, validity, and applicability of the results. Please avoid the temptation to identify and criticize every potential flaw in the study’s design.
      • The last paragraph, most importantly, should address the significance of the research/article to library and information practice as well as the practical implications for librarians and information professionals. This should be more thoughtful than, for instance, “this research has implications for school librarians” and instead should provide some insight into how the evidence could be used. This may also include, for example, the usefulness of the method or the originality of the research.
    • References – Only sources other than the article being critically appraised are included in the list of references, with a maximum of five. Do not use in-text citation to the article being reviewed. Instead, refer to the original article as “the study” and the author(s) as “the author(s)” or “the researcher(s)” rather than using their names in order to avoid confusion.