MBBS Hons 2010 Lars Eriksson HHSL Jill McTaggart Joint PA Hospital/UQ Library MBBS Honours Literature Review

MBBS Hons 2010 Where to find help ? Summary of information on Core MBBS library website for Honours students UQ Library web page – Services for Coursework Postgraduates - UQ Student services page – PhD writing/ Literature review - Where to find help

MBBS Hons 2010 Where to search? Start with Databases: PubMed or OVID Medline EMBASE.com Cochrane Library – (more resources)

MBBS Hons 2010 Other Databases and resources Web of Science – A broad selection of research literature Theses – (also called Dissertations) UQ eSpace – for current UQ publications, preprints and research data

MBBS Hons 2010 Searching – develop your search strategy Define your topic and be specific – if age, gender, and date range are important add them in. The more refined your search is the more relevant the results are. Breaking your search into parts will help you develop the search terms you will use and provide you with a search structure. (stroke OR cva OR cerebrovascular accident OR transient ischaemic attack OR tia OR apoplexy) AND (Acetylsalicylic Acid OR Aspirin)

MBBS Hons 2010 Use Boolean Searching… Combine similar words with OR Combine concepts with AND AND - narrows a search eg clothing and infection control OR – broadens a search eg myocardial infarction OR cardiovascular event NOT - excludes terms eg human not animal

MBBS Hons 2010 Database Search tips - Truncation In most searches of database the requirements are that you want get all version of your search term. For example if you are searching for literature about children you want to return all of the results that have child, child's, children, children's etc. By using the truncation operator you can achieve this very quickly. In most databases is an asterisk.* To capture the search mentioned above child* would capture all of the variants of the term. Beware as this search would also capture childbirth and childish.

MBBS Hons 2010 Database Search Tips – Phrase searching Looking for a phrase – a phrase is a string of words in which the words have a distinct meaning when they are together. E.g. “low back pain” Most databases will permit a phrase search using the inverted comas around the phrase.

MBBS Hons 2010 Database Search Tips – Field Searching Each database entry is constructed of fields. Each field represents a descriptor for the record. The most recognisable ones are title, abstract and author. These options are often available as a menu driven search and as a search commandas well. In PubMed fields are described with square brackets []. [ti] – Title [tiab] – title or abstract [ab] - abstract

MBBS Hons 2010 Tips for searching Subject Headings Use subject headings to refine your search. Most databases index items under consistent subject headings. E.g. the Medline subject low back pain is used for: Back Pain, Low Back Pains, Low Low Back Pains Pain, Low Back Pains, Low Back Lumbago Lower Back Pain Back Pain, Lower Back Pains, Lower Lower Back Pains Pain, Lower Back Pains, Lower Back Low Back Ache Ache, Low Back Aches, Low Back Back Ache, Low Back Aches, Low Low Back Aches Low Backache Backache, Low Backaches, Low Low Backaches Low Back Pain, Recurrent Recurrent Low Back Pain Low Back Pain, Postural Postural Low Back Pain Low Back Pain, Mechanical Mechanical Low Back Pain Low Back Pain, Posterior Compartment

MBBS Hons 2010 Accessing full text articles Via: Databases – Some databases link directly to the full text via UQ - OVID Medline, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus UQ Library catalogue – find title of journal and link to full text For those that are unavailable electronically use Document Delivery (Request It) support/request-document-delivery

MBBS Hons 2010 Other methods of finding citations – who’s referencing whom? Cited reference searching Scopus Web of Science Google Scholar Also look at bibliographies and studies within Systematic reviews

MBBS Hons 2010 Endnote A software package to organise your references and to create in-text citations. Available for staff and students from: Works with MS Word to produce in-text citations and bibliographies in the reference style you want. More information:

MBBS Hons 2010 Finally… Contact (Jill McTaggart) to check on or refine your search strategy We can organize a class for further searching tips and/or how to use Endnote. Please