BMS

Literature Searching

By The End Of The Session You Will Be Able To:

• Plan an effective search strategy

• Understand and use the electronic databases to find out what BMS literature has been published in the academic journals

• Identify and access the available journals

What is a Database?

Most databases provide bibliographic details of data published in professional journals including.…

- The Author and Title of an article

- The Journal in which it is printed

- The Volume, Part and Page Numbers of the article

- The Abstract, a brief summary of the article

- Subject KeywordsIn some cases there will be a link providing access to the full text and/or information regarding the Library’s print holdings

When you find an article

This is what the “citation” looks like

The “complete reference”

Evaluation

It is very important to evaluate your search results for relevance and quality

Is it what you need and is it trustworthy?

Do NOT trust information if you have not considered the following criteria:

• Currency (How old is this information? When was it last updated?)

• Authority (Who is the author, site creator, organisation, scholarly journal etc?)

• Intent (What is the purpose of the website / information? e.g. financial gain etc)

• Relevance (Is this what I need? Will it answer my question?)

• Objectivity (Balanced view? Opposing views represented? etc)

Evaluation

Peer Review

• Peer review is a core part of academic research.  It is a formal procedure for checking the quality of research before it is published.  

• If a publication is peer reviewed it means it has been read, checked and authenticated (reviewed) by independent, third party academics (peers).

• Peer review has been the quality-control system of academic publishing for hundreds of years.

Key Databases For BMS Literature

• Medline The premier biomedical database

• Science Citation The leading scienceIndex and technical journals

• Science Direct Elsevier’s excellent online journal package

Useful Databases For Full Text Journal Articles

• Science Direct

• PubMed

Plan Your Database Search

1. Define your question

2. Break it down into concepts (databases work best if you break your question down into single subjects)

3. List the words or phrases that you could use for each concept (alternative terms, truncation using * etc)

Search tips

• Narrow search e.g. tetanus AND vaccine

• Widen search e.g. Vaccination OR immunization

• Exclude words e.g. clostridium NOT difficile

• Search for phrases e.g. “Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus” (remember abbreviations, e.g. MRSA)

• Broaden search e.g. Vaccin* (finds vaccine, vaccination, vaccinated etc)

• Find different spellings e.g. Immuni?ation (finds immunisation and immunization)

Plan Your Database Search

The following resources should help with this process:

- Examples of high quality systematic literature reviews (Cochrane Library)

- An example of a search strategy and a worksheet to create your own

Accessing The Databases

• Go to the Library’s BMS Subject Guide http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/biomedicalsciences

• Select Journals

• Click on Finding Journal Articles / Using Databases

• Choose a database (e.g. Medline)

A Quick Search Demonstration

Searching Medline, Science Citation Index and Science Direct for peer reviewed journal articles on:

clostridium tetani and vaccination

If it’s not in the library…

• Complete an online Inter-Library Loan Form (http://unihub.mdx.ac.uk/study/library/resources/ill/index.aspx) with the bibliographic details of the article you want

• A journal article will be ordered for you from the British Library

• This can take approximately a week and you will receive a PDF link of the article via email

• There is a charge of £3 for this service

Other Libraries

• Sconul Access Scheme http://www.sconul.ac.uk/using_other_libraries/access/

• British Library http://www.bl.uk/

Referencing

• It is vital that your work is properly referenced and you have full bibliographic details of all resources used

• For details of how to reference your work, go to the Biomedical Science Library Subject Guide and select Information Skills

• Then click on Referencing & Plagiarism link to find the helpsheet Referencing and Citation Style

Useful Links

• Library and IT pages on UniHub http://unihub.mdx.ac.uk/study/library/index.aspx

• Biomedical Sciences Library Subject Guide http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/biomedicalsciences

Please ask us at the Library Helpdesk (or ‘Ask A Librarian’ on the Library Subject Guides) if you need any help!