1 How to find literature - A very short introduction SMED 8004 Medicine and Health Library October 2014

2 Sources for evidence based research Primary literature –articles concerning ONE study Secondary literature ( When available search for them!) -”Research on research” -E.g: Systematic reviews = «All» studies about the same question found, evaluated and reviewed. Large amounts of information can be assimilated quickly by health care providers From: How to read a paper : the basics of evidence- based medicine / Trisha Greenhalgh, 2010, (p115) Delay between research discoveries and implementation of effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies is reduced

3 Searching for information = Search strategy + Search technique Information literacy ? Which databases? Which search words? Combination of search words? (search profile) Databases have different user interfaces og search functions (Check help-funktion/guides) There are many more than we show in this presentation!! Result – I want the best weight of precicion and recall (for my use)

4 How to search – the work process: There is an increasing demand for you to document your literature search when you want to publish a scientific article. You should have a clearly defined searchable research question You should work systematically and structured when you search You should consider the aim of your search and time available to search

5 Search Technique; Top Tips Use keywords/thesaurus e.g MESH Use search history to combine searches Limits: Language, year, type of material e.g book… Define search fields e.g author, article title… Truncate: search for different word endings (often *) Phrase search: write ”quotes around words” Remember synonymes Use more than one source Citation tracking/searching

6 Use NOT with care! From the homepage of Durham University Library Use to combine search words

7 ntnu.edu/ub/subject/ethics OR About NTNU» NTNU University Library» Subject Areas» Applied ethics

8 Largest and much used database in medicine/biomedicine References and abstracts from scientific journals (5600 journals covered) The free version of Medline Link to fulltext or article-ordering = Find systematic reviews and clinical studies easy

9 Google Scholar = «Scientific Google» Scientific articles, conferences, Google books… Searches full text (publishers, universities, open access..) What is much cited ranks high on the «hit-list» Not very advanced search options Search for one known reference/article works very well Has citations / citation tracking No quality control Link to full text/ordering = NTNU See also: Web of science and Scopus Good source for interdisciplinary issues

10 Scopus - interdisciplinary reference-database. ”Who sites who” journals, conference proceedings Link to fulltext or article-ordering = Measure journal impact (see «Analytics»)

11 Web of science - interdisciplinary reference-database. ”Who sites who” journals, conference proceedings Link to fulltext or article-ordering = Measure journal impact factor = Journal citation reports

12 Scopus, ISI Web of Science, Google Scholar Why? multidisciplinary Finding the original work(s) on which an idea or research is based Finding reactions to a work Finding studies that are closely related Following up developments in a field Identifying emerging research areas Finding the impact of one author’s work on other’s work Finding background information Finding grey literature 12 How to find information : a guide for researchers / Sally Rumsey, 2008

13 How to stay up to date? in : Create a personal area with your own password - alerts will notify you of new articles matching saved searches Also possible: -Store references on PubMed. -Store filters that will automatically group your search results. -Check your PubMed activity in the last six months. Check the Pubmed guide on our homepage Similar tools are also available in other databases

14 Further reading (E- books on medical information): T Greenhalgh 2010, How to read a paper; the basics of evidence- based medicine George M Hall 2013, How to write a paper Getting your research paper published : a surgical perspective / edited by Mohit Bhandari, 2011.

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