Intro to Scientific Literature and Searching Katrina Romagnoli, MS, MLIS, PhD CoSSBI 6/20/2016

What is Scientific Literature?

Record of scientific work? Way of communicating findings with larger scientific community? Way of demonstrating productivity? Report on research, reviewed by other researchers? All of the above?

Where is scientific literature located?

Pubmed? Paper journals? Electronic journals? Google? Databases? All of the above? ….Wikipedia?

What does peer-reviewed mean?

You ask your friends to proof-read your paper first? You ask strangers to proof-read your paper? A journal asks experts in your field to read your paper and determine if it’s well-written? Valid? Interesting? Novel?

How peer-review works, in theory You submit your impressive manuscript to the journal with the highest impact factor in your field The editor thinks your paper is within scope, interesting, novel, and well-written. The editor sends it to the top geniuses in your field to review, for free. The top geniuses review it immediately, say it’s great, should be published immediately Celebration ensues!

How peer review works in, reality You submit your impressive manuscript to the journal with the highest impact factor in your field The editor might reject it immediately if it’s out of scope, not novel, poorly executed, or poorly written If not, the editor (who works for free) begs as many experts in the field as he can to review it (for free). Many will say no. The few who say yes might be very new. They might even be graduate students. One reviewer might give detailed, positive feedback with suggestions for improvement. Another might say to accept it as is. The third will say to reject it as is. You will rewrite it to please all 3, and the editor. Eventually, it might be accepted. You cheer quietly.

Does Peer Review guarantee quality? NO! Sort of. Yes? Example:

Introduction to Literature Searching Pubmed Google Scholar This is not an introduction to all literature, just what the general public can access – That includes you, until you morph into college students – Ezproxy:

PubMed vs. Google Scholar Pubmed Biomedical focus Curated Contains abstracts Sometimes has full text (PubMed Central) Definitely legitimate, peer-reviewed, research publications Google Scholar Everything! Not curated Might have abstracts Sometimes has full text (pdfs) Likely legitimate, peer- reviewed, research publications

How can you tell what is a good article? Where did you find it? Who published it? – Nature, Cell? (general science) – JAMIA, JBI, IJMI, JMIR, BMC Bioinformatics (specific) – What’s the impact factor of the journal? How many times has it been cited? Who has cited it? Are the claims made by the authors supportable? Was it recommended by your mentor? (Definitely read it!)

Reading a scientific article Structure: – Introduction – Materials and Methods – Results – Discussion

Reading a scientific article, continued Introduction – What’s the problem? – Why do we care? – What has been done already? – What is still unknown? – What is this article reporting to address that? – What are the research questions?

Reading a scientific article, continued Methods: – What was done? – Using what materials/technology/tools/resources? – By whom? – How was it analyzed? – Do the methods make sense for the research questions? – Do the statistics make sense for the methods?

Reading a scientific article, continued Results: – What did they find? – What do the statistics say about what they found? – Do the results make sense based on the methods? – Should not see any interpretation of results, merely reporting.

Reading a scientific article, continued Discussion: – What do they interpret their findings to mean? – Does their interpretation make sense? – Do they fit their work into the larger field well? – Can they make the claims they are? – What are the limitations of the work? Do they report them honestly? – How do they address the limitations? – What is the planned future work?

Literature Searching Live Intro to Pubmed: – Intro to Google Scholar – Scholar.google.com Intro to Reference Management – Mendeley – Zotero – Endnote Ezproxy: