Transcript Literature searching for research: July 2010

Literature Searching for Research
Catherine Ebenezer
Library and Information Service
October 2011
Purposes of literature searching
Identify extent and quality of work
already carried out in the subject
area
Identify key contacts
Avoid duplication!
Planning your search: PICO
Patient/population/problem
Intervention/exposure
Comparison/control (may be
implicit)
Outcomes
Try it for yourselves!
Effect of different types of flooring on incidence
of falls in frail elderly people
Are ACE inhibitors effective in delaying
admission to nursing/residential care for people
with Alzheimer’s disease?
What interventions can reduce challenging
behaviour in dementia?
A search framework: 1
Identify synonyms for each search concept as
identified in your PICO framework
Use Boolean OR to combine synonyms for
each PICO component
Use Boolean AND to combine the grouped
PICO components to execute your search
A search framework: 2
AND
acute stroke
OR
cerebrovascular accident
cerebrovascular event
ischaemic stroke
AND
AND
blood pressure reduction
no treatment
OR
anti-hypertensive agents
hypertension – drug
therapy
diuretics, atenolol etc.
lowering blood pressure
O
C
I
P
OR
placebo
secondary prevention
OR
secondary prophylaxis
reduce mortality
risk reduction
Search techniques: 1
To increase the number of results you retrieve:
 Combine free text with subject headings using OR
 Truncate
 Stem: e.g. psychiatr* retrieves psychiatrist, psychiatric
 Internal / wildcard: Schultz or Schulz? Schul?z will find both
 Explode
 Expands database subject headings to include narrower terms
 e.g. exp Dementia/ will include Alzheimer’s disease, vascular
dementia, Lewy body dementia etc.
Search techniques: 2
To increase the number of results you retrieve:
Related articles – from any relevant article
Cited by – for key papers
Reference lists in CINAHL
Search techniques: 3
To restrict / decrease the number of results you retrieve:
 Use ‘restrict to focus’ / ‘major descriptors’
 Add more subject terms to your search strategy
 Select subheadings (only if you are really swamped!)
 Use limit features
 Language - English
 Age group – your target population
 Publication type – consider searching for reviews only
 Date range – most recent
 Use clinical filters
Types of literature: 1
Primary literature
Journal articles
Preprints
Conference proceedings
Informally published reports –
(“grey literature”)
Theses
Types of literature: 2
Secondary literature
Reviews
Books: edited collections
Books: monographs / surveys
Official publications
CATs, POEMs etc.
Sources for literature searching: 1
Databases of articles and books

Bibliographic e.g. MEDLINE, PsycINFO
 Full text e.g. PsycArticles, Cochrane Database
Library catalogues
e.g. COPAC, British Library, LIBERO
Research databases
e.g. NIHR Portfolio Database / NIHR Research Portal, Virginia
Henderson International Nursing Library (USA), Research
Register for Social Care
Sources for literature searching: 2
… not forgetting …
 Hand searching of core journals
 Reference lists / footnote chasing
 Printed bibliographies (older material)
 Search engines (NB Google Scholar, Google Books)
 Specialised Web portals
 Picking colleagues’ brains / contacting key researchers – can yield
unpublished material
 Social networking with other researchers
Characteristics of the literature
Mental health literature is problematic
multidisciplinary
“poorly controlled” in some areas
scattered across many different databases:
 none is comprehensive
 all need to be looked at in a thorough search
Brettle A J and Long A F (2001) Comparison of bibliographic databases for information
on the rehabilitation of people with severe mental illness. Bull Med Libr Assoc 89(4) 353361
Bibliographic databases: 1
MEDLINE ATHENS
 4000+ journals indexed; 1948 Produced by National Library of Medicine (USA)
 Available free at www.pubmed.gov and via NHS
Evidence
 European journals not particularly well covered
 Mental health coverage reasonable
 Strong on acute medical specialities
 PubMed version has useful ‘related articles’ feature
Bibliographic databases: 2
Psychological Abstracts
(PsycINFO, PsycLIT, ClinPsyc) ATHENS
 Produced by American Psychological Association: 1806 Not available anywhere free, but short-term access via
web can be purchased
 Covers all aspects of psychology
 Comprehensive but some US bias
Bibliographic databases: 3
EMBASE ATHENS
European commercial product: 1980Comprehensive psychiatry coverage
Strong on pharmacology and drug therapy
issues
Thesaurus terms very “old-fashioned”
First resort!
N.B. OVID EMBASE now includes non-overlapping MEDLINE records
Bibliographic databases: 4
CINAHL ATHENS
 Covers nursing, allied health professions, health
management, health librarianship; 1982 Recent records include references – can search –
good for tracking down older material
 US bias but increasingly strong coverage of UK and
Australasian literature
 Good for psychiatric nursing
 Includes detailed abstracts of US / Canadian nursing
theses
 Some journals very obscure
Bibliographic databases: 5
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
ATHENS
575 full text publications
nearly 550 peer-reviewed titles
covers emotional and behavioural
characteristics, psychiatry and psychology,
mental processes, anthropology, and
observational and experimental methods
Bibliographic databases: 6
AMED ATHENS
Produced in UK by British Library: 1985Allied and Complementary Medicine
Aims to complement MEDLINE
Best source of UK allied health literature
Bibliographic databases: 7
Cochrane Library
 Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
 NHS Economic Evaluations Database (EED)
 NHS CRD Database of Abstracts of Reviews of
Effectiveness (DARE)
 HTA Database
 Cochrane Methodology Register
 Central Register of Controlled Trials
Bibliographic databases: 8
Citation indexes
 Identify a significant piece of published research in
your field
 Find out who has cited it in later work
 Web of Science citation indexes
(available in university libraries)
 OVID databases – ‘ find citing articles’ feature
 Google Scholar
 BMJ Journals
Bibliographic databases: 9
Others …
 ChildData (child health and welfare)
 ASSIA (applied social sciences)
 Social Care Online (social work)
 OTSeeker (occupational therapy)
 PEDRO (physiotherapy)
 HMIC (health management) ATHENS
 Dissertation Abstracts
Bibliographic databases: 10
lots of web-accessible databases on specialist areas:
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BiblioSleep: sleep
Autism Data autism /ASD
Aegis: AIDS-HIV
NARIC: disability
CIRRIE: rehabilitation
PIE: mental health policy
Campbell Collaboration: social
policy reviews
 CAMEOL: complementary
therapies
 speechBITE – speech pathology
 BEI: education (UK)
 ERIC: education (US)
 Alcohol Concern Knowledge
Base: alcohol
 DrugData: substance misuse
 PEP-WEB: psychoanalysis
 Health Systems Evidence: health
management
 Dementia Catalogue
 PsycBITE – psychological effects
of ABI
Bibliographic databases: 11
Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com
 Incorporates results from
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bibliographic databases (e.g. MEDLINE)
preprint servers and institutional repositories
library catalogues
publishers’ catalogues
 Ranks results by relevance (how?)
 Links to:
 full text where available
(NB links to content of TEWV e-journals on site)
 references citing the work
 ‘related articles’
 Can use limits and Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
BUT – what does it contain? And not contain? Inconsistent!
Specialist search engines
 Scirus: scientific content - includes scientists'
homepages, courseware, pre-print server material,
institutional repository and website information
 OAIster: institutional repository content
 SHERPA Search: full-text search of UK repositories
 OpenDOAR: world-wide directory of open access
institutional repositories
 EThOs – BL electronic theses online
Specialist portals
Useful for background information, contacts
 NHS Evidence
 National Institute for Mental Health in England
 Centre for Mental Health
 PsychNet-UK
 Psychology Wiki
 PsychCentral
 BrainSource.com
Current awareness services
Current awareness
bulletins
Monitoring changes in
web pages
Electronic tables of
contents
Health news services
Subject-based
alerting
RSS feeds
Saved searches in
health databases
Netvibes portal:
www.netvibes.com/tewv.lis
Managing your references
 Many bibliographic databases will allow you to export
and save your search results in different formats (e.g.
XML, WebCharts, HTML, PDF, tagged text) and / or
email them to yourself or to other people
 Bibliographic management applications can be
used to manage references. These let you:
 collect and organise references from many different resources into your own
personal, searchable database
 create formatted bibliographies and reading lists
 develop lists of cited articles as footnotes or as endnotes at the conclusion of
papers
Managing your references
Installed on your PC
EndNote
Reference Manager
ProCite
JabRef (free!)
Web-based
RefWorks
Connotea (free!)
CiteULike (free!)
Mendeley (free!)
Wikipedia article: Comparison of reference
management software
Research information: 1
Current / ongoing research
 NIHR portal and National Research Register archive: ongoing and
recently-completed research projects funded by or of interest to
the NHS
 Research Register for Social Care: current and completed UK
social care research
 NIH RePORTER (USA): federally-funded biomedical research
 Current Controlled Trials: information about RCTs
 Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatment:
publishes uncertainties about the effects of treatment
which cannot currently be answered via systematic reviews
Research information: 2
Current / ongoing research
Mental Health Research Network
Dementias and Neurodegenerative
Diseases Research Network
RCN Research and Development
Co-ordinating Centre
Research information: 3
Guidance and funding for researchers: national
Association of Medical Research
Charities: good practice in research
RDInfo / RDFunding: training, funding
opportunities, advice
Research Councils UK
Research information: 4
Guidance and funding for researchers: local
Mental Health Research Centre
at Durham University
 SPIRE seminars
 Involvement in MHRN studies
 Research clinics
 Research training: modules in research methods up
to master’s level
Catherine Ebenezer
Library and Information Services
Manager
[email protected]
01642 838380 / 838112