How to search Professional Research Literature
The following links explain what professional literature is, how to do literature searches (particularly using PubMed), how to obtain the journal articles, and how to set up regular email updates of the latest professional literature in your area of interest.
What is Professional Literature?
Peer-reviewed journals
When professionals look for health information, they like to get it firsthand. That means searching in the peer-reviewed journals. Any new research is published as soon as possible in a peer-reviewed journal. That's why peer-reviewed journals are the first port of call for professionals who want to find the latest health information. It's also a way of ensuring the quality of the information.
No article is published in a peer-reviewed journal until it has been reviewed anonymously by at least two peers of the researcher (hence the name: peer-reviewed journal). In other words, the editor of the journal sends the article, before it's published, to at least two anonymous researchers who are specialists in the field of study. Only if the reviewers and the editor decide in favour of it, does the article get published. Many articles submitted to these journals are not published because they are not considered high enough quality. Many others need to be revised before they are published. That doesn't mean to say that all articles published in journals are perfect or even high quality: it's extremely difficult to do a good piece of research and produce a good journal article. But at least peer review does set a standard.
Original Research and Reviews
At least two kinds of article appear in journals: original research and reviews. Original research is new research that the authors of the journal article carried out themselves. Reviews are articles that collect together all the research on a particular question. They summarize the original research and assess its quality. The quickest way to get information about a question is to find a good recent review, and, if possible, a systematic review.
Systematic Reviews
A systematic review is a review of research literature. It “Includes a clear statement of the purpose of the review, a comprehensive search and retrieval of the relevant research, explicit selection criteria, critical appraisal of the primary studies, and reproducible decisions regarding relevance, selection, and methodological rigor of the primary research” (Cook, Meade, & Fink, 1996). It is the best place to start any search because it critically summarizes all the best available research evidence in one place.
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)
If you want to find out the effects of a treatment or educational approach, whether beneficial or harmful, the best original research that you can find is a randomized controlled trial, often abbreviated simply as an RCT. An RCT is a trial of a treatment (e.g., medication, operation, therapy technique, equipment) in which the researchers randomly assign participants to the treatment group and to at least one other group (no treatment or a different treatment). Seeing that they are randomly assigned, the groups should be just about the same before they receive the treatment. If the groups are different after treatment, then it must the treatment that caused the difference.
RCTs are better than trials that use no control group or comparison group. If there is no comparison group and the treatment group gets better, it doesn't show that the treatment caused the improvement. Perhaps they would have improved spontaneously, without any treatment. Only a control group will tell you whether this happens.
RCTs are also better than trials with a non-randomized control group. If the group is non-randomized, then the treatment group and the control group may be different begin with. If you find differences after treatment, then it might be due to: (a) the treatment or (b) the differences between the groups before treatment even started.
How to Make Best Use of the Professional Research Literature discusses systematic reviews, RCTs, and other kinds of research. It also explains which types of research are best for which types of questions.
Evidence-Based Journals
There is a growing number of evidence-based journals. These journals collect together the most important information published in the professional literature. They enable professionals to keep up with the literature in their field without doing vast amounts of reading. At present, these journals exist only in Medicine. But keep an eye out for the emergence of any evidence-based journals in disability or therapy. They will provide the quickest way of keeping up to date with the best literature in the field.
Reference:
Cook, D. J., Meade, M. O., Fink, M. P. (1996). How to keep up with the critical care literature and avoid being buried alive. Critical Care Medicine, 24 (10), 1757-1768
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Getting the Right Search Terms
Professional literature databases are good for finding answers to questions about diagnosis, causes, treatment, harm, education, and how children develop over time. But not until you have done some background reading using Websites with Health and Disability Information. Professional literature databases are for people who already know the basics, and have specific further questions they want to answer.
Before starting a literature search, you need to convert these questions into search terms. Search terms are the words that you type into the database in order to tell it what literature to retrieve for you.
Questions about Treatment, Education or Harm
For questions about treatment, education or harm, at least two search terms are usually required:
- the type of treatment (medication, operation, therapy technique, equipment) or educational intervention, and
- the condition or disability of the child.
For example, if the question is “Will the TEACCH program help my child, who has autism?”, then the two search terms might be:
- TEACCH
- autism OR autistic
In the search box, you would type: TEACCH AND (autism OR autistic)
If the question is “Is botox safe for my child who has cerebral palsy?”, then the two search terms might be:
- botox OR botulinum toxin
- cerebral palsy
In the search box, you would type: (botox OR botulinum toxin) AND cerebral palsy
Questions about Diagnosis
For questions about diagnosis, use:
- the child's condition or disability, and
- diagnosis OR diagnoses OR sensitivity OR specificity.
If the question is “How is ADHD diagnosed?”, then the two search terms might be:
- ADHD
- diagnosis OR diagnoses OR sensitivity OR specificity
In the search box, you would type: ADHD AND (diagnosis OR diagnoses OR sensitivity OR specificity)
Questions about Causes (Aetiology)
For questions about aetiology, use:
- the child's condition or disability, and
- risk OR cause
If the question is “What causes intellectual disability?”, then the two search terms might be:
- intellectual disability
- risk OR cause
In the search box, you would type: intellectual disability AND (risk OR cause)
Questions about the Future
For questions about the future, use:
- the child's condition or disability, and
- words describing the stage of life or the outcome you want to find out about (e.g., school, transitioning, employment, ageing, life expectancy, walking)
If the question is “What kinds of jobs will my child, who has an intellectual disability, be able to do?”, then the two search terms might be:
- intellectual disability
- employment
In the search box, you would type: intellectual disability AND employment
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Linking Search Terms
Databases often allow you to link search terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT).
“AND” will retrieve all articles that include all the terms. For example, the search cerebral palsy AND botox will yield articles that include both of these terms.
”OR” retrieve all articles that include any of the terms. For example, the search autism OR autistic will yield articles that include either of these terms.
”NOT” will exclude all articles that include the term after it. For example, the search education NOT adult will include all articles on education unless they include the word “adult”. This helps to narrow the search (in this case, to children).
These terms can be combined in various ways. For example the search (autism OR autistic) AND TEACCH will first search for articles with either autism or autistic in them (because the terms in brackets are dealt with first), and then search among those articles for ones that include the word TEACCH in them.
Some (but not all) databases will also allow you to use an asterisk (*) to stand for any letter or letters. For example, disabilit* will retrieve articles with the words, “disability” and “disabilities”.
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Professional Literature Databases
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews is publicly accessible. It lists high quality health care reviews. It provides the abstract, a plain language summary, or the full article on this website. Articles are downloadable as pdf files.
PEDro or the Physiotherapy Evidence Database lists systematic reviews and clinical trials in physiotherapy. It does not contain the full articles, but provides abstracts and links to the websites of the journals where they are published..
OTseeker or the Occupational Therapy Systematic Evaluation of Evidence is to Occupational Therapy what PEDro is to Physiotherapy. It lists systematic reviews and clinical trials in Occupational Therapy. It does not contain the full articles. It provides either the abstracts or links to them and also provides links to the journals' websites where the full articles are published.
speechBITE lists Best Interventions and Treatment Efficacy in Speech Pathology. It does not contain full articles but provides abstracts or links to them.
PubMed is an enormous database of medical literature. It contains over 18 million citations. It has more sophisticated search functions than the other databases listed here. It also supports automatic email alerts. To find out more about how to search PubMed, go to Tips on searching PubMed. To find out how to set up an automatic email alert, go to How to obtain regular updates in your area of interest.
The TRIP (Turning Research Into Practice) Database retrieves evidence-based medicine literature, including systematic reviews, evidence-based synopses, guidelines, answers to clinical questions, primary research, and electronic textbooks.
The National Guideline Clearinghouse lists clinical practice guidelines on a range of conditions.
DAREor the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects is a database of health research. It includes systematic reviews, and gives a detailed description of each. It can be found at the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination website.
Infotrieve is a database of scientific, technical and medical literature. It can sometimes detect articles not found in PubMed. It shows abstracts, and allows you to purchase the full article if you wish.
Google Scholar can be used to search for scholarly literature, including journals, books and websites, on the internet. It operates just like Google.
Scirus is a large database of scientific literature. It includes journals and websites.
ERIC is a database of educational journal articles and other educational papers. The quality of the literature is variable, sometimes poor.
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Tips on searching PubMed
There are many ways to search PubMed. The following is recommended as saving time by Doig & Simpson (2003).
Step 1: Get your search terms
Using the tips in Getting the Right Search Terms, decide on your search terms. It's useful to keep these terms written down in front of you throughout the search, so that you don't lose sight of what you're looking for. As you proceed with your search, you may discover better search terms; jot these down as you go, so that you don't forget them.
Step 2: Search for systematic reviews
The best evidence is a systematic review, so start by searching for one.
- Go to PubMed
- In the left column, select “Clinical Queries”.
- Scroll down to the heading, “Find Systematic Reviews”.
- Type in your search terms, and click the “Go” button beside them.
If you get articles, you can scroll through them to find one that answers your question. (Sometimes searches retrieve articles that don't seem at all relevant. But if there are less than 100 articles, it is worth browsing their titles to find one you want. There might even be several systematic reviews.)
If you find no review articles, then go to Step 3.
Step 3: Search for the best original research
In many areas, no systematic review has been done, and you need to search for original studies. Even if you do manage to find a systematic review, it is useful to chase up the original studies that are too recent to be included in the systematic review.
- Go to PubMed
- In the left column, select “Clinical Queries”.
- Scroll down to the heading, “Search by Clinical Study Category”.
- Choose the type of question you want to answer: etiology, diagnosis, therapy, prognosis, or clinical prediction guides, and click on the radio button next to it.
- The radio button next to “narrow, specific search” is already selected. This will give you a highly specific search, and PubMed will search only for the high quality papers.
- Type in your search terms, and click the “Go” button beside them.
If you don't get any papers this way:
- Try again, clicking on the radio button next to “broad, sensitive search”. Be prepared to get a lot of papers that are not relevant to you. That's why it's best to do the specific search first.
If these steps give you what you need, you can stop here. But if you want to go further, or if you still haven't found an answer to your question, then go to Step 4.
Step 4: Refine your search terms
If you haven't found an answer to your question, there could be two reasons. One is that there is no evidence on the question you're asking. More likely, you haven't yet managed to hit on the right search terms. That's where MeSH terms can help you.
MeSH stands for Medical Subject Headings. Every paper listed in PubMed is indexed using a number of standardized terms called MeSH terms. This is to enable people to find papers more easily. Once you identify the MeSH terms that relate to your search, then you can find all papers on that subject very quickly.
- In the left column, select “MeSH Database”.
- Type in the term that you're having trouble locating. Do not type in more than one term. Do not use Boolean operators. This is not a search for papers. This is a search for subject headings. Then click the “Go” button.
- PubMed will offer you some search terms that approximate to the one you want. If one of them seems suitable, then look for the word “Links” on the right side of the screen beside it. If you click on this, a submenu will appear. It offers four choices:
- PubMed, which finds all the articles in PubMed in which this term is listed as a MeSH term
- PubMed - Major Topic, which finds all the articles in PubMed, in which this term is listed as the major topic (a smaller number of articles than the first search).
- Clinical Queries, which returns to the clinical queries box, and enters the MeSH term there (yielding a smaller number of articles than either of the first two).
- NLM MeSH Browser, which takes you to the MeSH browswer to find out more about the MeSH term.
- Try Clinical Queries. If that doesn't work, then try PubMed - Major Topic. And if you are still not finding anything, then try PubMed.
Another way to locate papers is via another paper. If you can manage to find just one paper that is exactly what you need, then you can use it to get to other papers.
- Click on the title of the article of interest.
- The full reference and abstract (if available) will appear. On the right of your screen, you will find related articles. PubMed will show you only a few titles of related articles, but below them are two links: See Reviews and See All, which will show all related review articles and all related articles respectively.
Reference:
Doig, G. S. & Simpson, F. (2003). Efficient literature searching: a core skill for the practice of evidence-based medicine. Intensive Care Medicine, 29, 2119-2127.
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What if there is no journal article on the topic?
If you can't find any peer-reviewed journal articles at all on a topic, what does it mean? It might mean that no research has been done on this topic yet. Perhaps it's a very new type of therapy. Alternatively, it might mean that research has been done, but, so far, no journal editor and reviewers have considered it high enough in quality to publish. Sometimes promoters of new treatments will advertise them before they have been assessed. The long-term effects are unknown. So are the risks.
What should you do if you think that a new treatment might be helpful for your child but it hasn't appeared in a journal yet? Be cautious. Find out as much information as you can (both positive and negative) before you try it. Find out the rationale for the treatment (that is, the explanation of how it works), and see if you can find any journal articles about that. See if you can find any HON accredited websites on it. If you can't, then find the best website on the new treatment and then copy and past the URL into WRAPIN. WRAPIN will refer you to reliable information about the treatment or the rationale behind the treatment.
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How to make sense of the PubMed display
PubMed will give summaries of articles, 20 to a page. This makes it quick and easy to browse through the titles and pick the ones you want. But you can alter the display using the drop-down menus at the top of the page. You may wish to display the abstract, not merely the summary. AbstractPlus will display the abstract as well as related articles.
You can also display more than 20 per page if you wish. The articles will be sorted by date of publication, with the most recent at the top. You can alter this to an alphabetic search by author, title or journal – but this is not normally very useful.
Once you have selected the articles you want (by ticking the boxes beside them), you can use the “Send to” dropdown menu to send them to a text file or email them to yourself. It is wise to use the first dropdown menu box to select “Abstract” before doing this, so that you have not only the titles but also the abstracts of the articles that interest you.
The summary display of an article looks like this:
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How to obtain journal articles
If you wish to order the full text of the article you will need all of the information up to and including the page numbers. That includes:
- Title of the article
- Authors
- Title of the journal
- Publication year
- Volume of the journal (and the issue if you have it)
- Page numbers.
Some articles are available free or for a cost on PubMed or the other databases listed here. Some articles can be found in Google Scholar.
Ask your disability service provider whether they have a library, and whether you can obtain articles from them. Some disability service providers have a library service for clients, but most do not.
Some Western Australian libraries offer a service to people who wish to obtain journal articles. These are as follows:
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How to obtain regular updates in your area of interest
If you have done a successful search in PubMed, you can save it, and ask PubMed to re-do the same search regularly (every week or every month) and email you the lastest results. This will keep you up to date with the most recent literature in your area of interest. To see how to do searches in PubMed, go to Tips on searching PubMed.
First, you must set up an account for yourself.
- Go to PubMed
- In the left column, select “My NCBI”.
- On the right, click on “Register for an account”.
Once you've registered, you will only need to login directly using your username and password.
- Follow the steps to register.
When you have registered or logged into your account, you can start setting up searches.
- Click on PubMed on the bar at the top of the page.
- Do a search.
- On the right of the search box, there are two hyperlinks: Advanced Search and Save Search. Click on Save Search.
- Click on the Save button.
- Answer the questions and click the Save button at the bottom.
If you find that you are getting too many or too few articles emailed to you, you can always go back into your NCBI account and narrow or broaden your search.
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