Library Carpentry: Introduction to R and litsearchr

This Library Carpentry lesson introduces people working in library- and information-related roles to using R and Rstudio when working on systematic reviews. In addition to the basics of R and RStudio, you will learn to use the litsearchr R package.

litsearchr facilitates the development of a systematic search strategy, partially automating keyword selection from a set of search results and writing Boolean searches, including automating truncation of terms.

This is an introduction to R and RStudio designed for participants with no programming experience. At the conclusion of the lesson you will understand what R and RStudio does and how to use the litsearchr package to advance your work with systematic reviews.

Getting Started

Library Carpentry’s teaching is hands-on, so participants are encouraged to use their own computers to ensure the proper setup of tools for an efficient workflow. Our lessons focus on building software and data skills within library and information-related communities. To most effectively participate in the lesson, please make sure to download the data and necessary software beforehand.

This workshop assumes no prior experience with the tools covered in the lesson.

To get started, follow the directions in the Setup tab to get access to the required software and data for this workshop.

Data

To complete this lesson you will need to install R and RStudio and download the following files from Figshare. Save the folder to your Desktop.

• zip folder

For this lesson we’ll be using a published systematic review Impact of alcohol advertising and media exposure on adolescent alcohol use: a systematic review of longitudinal studies which assessed the impact of alcohol advertising and media exposure on future adolescent alcohol use.

See Setup for information about how to install R and RStudio.

Lesson Overview