Pharmacy students' guide to defining research topics, searching PubMed and an introduction to EndNote.

1. Linda Galloway, Librarian
June 2, 2016
Search & Cite
with style!

2. Pharmacy students toiling with research…
www.theguardian.com
gsabusiness.com

3. There is a better way!
 Defining a research topic
 Searching PubMed
 Search strategies using MeSH
 Evaluating literature
 Intro to Endnote
 Creating your EndNote library
 Saving citations
 Generating a bibliography
3
http://chapman.libguides.com/pharmacy

4. ASK ACQUIRE APPRAISE
Formulate a researchable question, find relevant articles, and evaluate
articles for suitability

5. Truths about Literature Research
Scientific knowledge builds on previous research
Literature search will reveal seminal articles/authors in a
field
A strong research proposal ALWAYS begins with
awareness of what has been studied and what questions
remain to be answered

6. ASK
Formulate a researchable question

7. Defining a researchable question…
1. Choose a topic that interests you
2. Gain a working knowledge of your topic
3. Identify areas of further research – controversies, unanswered
questions
4. Develop your research question
5. Write your introduction or thesis statement – what do you
want to accomplish with this research?

8. Defining a researchable question…
1. Choose a topic that interests you
 Medical marijuana
2. Gain a working knowledge of your topic
 Micromedex, Natural Medicines DB, other tertiary sources
3. Identify areas of further research – controversies, unanswered
questions
 PubMed, Web of Science, most current research
4. Develop your research question
 Consult with your advisor, remember to edit if you need to!
5. Write your introduction or thesis statement – what do you
want to accomplish with this research?
 What do you want to prove/disprove and how will you do it?

9. ACQUIRE
Find relevant articles

10. Specialized Databases
 PubMed
 Database from the National Library of Medicine that includes MEDLINE citations in
the areas of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, public
health, allied healths. Provides links to some full text articles.
 SciFinder
 Research discovery tool that provides access to research from many scientific
disciplines, including biomedical sciences, chemistry, engineering, etc.
 Web of Science
 Scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Navigate
with cited reference searching and author finders

11. Developing a search strategy
1. Define a researchable question
2. Find background information – use a tertiary source
3. Develop a search strategy using keywords and phrases
4. Search, and refine search terms as you retrieve results
5. Use the tools in the database to help with your search!
6. Evaluate the results obtained, and further refine if necessary

13. Remote Access to Library Resources
Almost all electronic resources are available off
campus via our proxy server
Log on once and until you close your browser
are recognized as Chapman student
Navigate to databases/resources via the
Libraries website so you are recognized as an
affiliated person

14. Entering search terms in PubMed
 Don’t use any punctuation until you have tried your search first
 PubMed inserts AND between all terms
 The more terms you enter, the more specific your search will be
 Search term hierarchy (Automatic Term Mapping):
 Subjects (using the Medical Subject Headings)
 Journals
 Authors
PubMed automatically searches for phrases during Automatic Term
Mapping

15. How does marijuana ingestion interact with orlistat taken for weight loss?
How did PubMed interpret
my search??

17. MeSH headings from a review article

20. MeSH Terms
are magical!

21. Full text of PubMed articles

22. APPRAISE
Evaluate literature for relevancy

23. Evidence-based Medicine
 Ask: Convert the need for information into an answerable question.
 Acquire: Track down the best evidence with which to answer that
question.
 Appraise: Critically appraise that evidence for its validity and
applicability.
 Apply: Integrate the critical appraisal with clinical expertise and with
the patient's unique biology, values, and circumstances.
 Evaluate: Evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency in executing steps
1-4 and seek ways to improve them both for next time.

24. Quality of evidence – filtered (or evaluated)
1. A systematic review is a comprehensive
survey of a topic in which all of the
primary studies of the highest level of
evidence have been systematically
identified, appraised and then summarized
according to an explicit and reproducible
methodology.
2. Critically-appraised topics – evidence is
synthesized and presented for
practitioners by experts in the field.
3. Critically-appraised articles - original
research article reviews, debate, &
commentary.
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries: Resources.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/resources.htmld/guides/ebm_resources.shtml. Accessed April
29, 2016.

25. Quality of evidence - unfiltered
4. A randomized controlled study is one in which
there are two groups, one treatment group and
one control group. The treatment group receives
the treatment under investigation, and the control
group receives either no treatment or some
standard default treatment. Patients are randomly
assigned to all groups.
5. A cohort study involves two groups (cohorts) of
patients, one which received the exposure of
interest, and one which did not, and following
these cohorts forward for the outcome of interest.
6. Case studies/series/reports describe a series of
patients with an outcome of interest without using
a control group.
7. Background information and expert opinion can be
found in textbooks, opinions of respected
authorities and information based on clinical
experience
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries: Resources. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/resources.htmld/guides/ebm_resources.shtml.
Accessed April 29, 2016.

27. Introduction to citation managers
What they are, what they do
Create your endnote library
Save citations

28. What do these tools do?
 Create collections of articles, books, webpages (and lots more) for use
in research
 Format and create bibliographies using a particular citation style
 Link to the source materials
 Store the source materials
 Insert in-text citations and bibliography entries while writing in
Microsoft Word
 Collaborate and share collections with others

29. Citation Management Tools
Ask your professor, advisor or lab director which tool they prefer…
 EndNote – Web version (lite) free & available through Web of
Science; can also purchase more robust desktop version
 Zotero – open source citation manager
 Mendeley – open source citation manager and discovery tool
http://chapman.libguides.com/citations
29

31. Add citations from PubMed to your EndNote
Library
 Open up your EndNote library by logging in via this link
EndNote OR by accessing via the research guide:
http://chapman.libguides.com/endnote
 Conduct your search in PubMed and save citations of interest to
your ‘Clipboard’
 Export the clipboard to your EndNote library by following
directions on the next few slides
 Check that your citations have correctly imported and create a
‘Group’ (folder, or collection) of these citations

32. Select the citation(s) and Send to ->
Clipboard then Add to Clipboard

33. To add citations to EndNote, click the Send to menu at the upper
right corner of your results or Clipboard. Select Citation
manager. Then, click the Create File button.

34. Login to EndNote, select Collect and Import
References

35. Browse for the file, Import Option is PubMed
and choose destination folder

36. Reference(s) should import smoothly
EndNote works differently on
computers with various software
versions and operating systems.
Consult this guide for help with
EndNote:
http://chapman.libguides.com/end
note

37. Find American Medical Association (AMA)
citation style – here it is JAMA

38. Create your bibliography in JAMA style
1. Brooks SV, Bigelow S. Preparing students for
research: faculty/librarian collaboration in a pre-
doctoral physical therapy research course. Health Info
Libr J. 2015;32(4):332-338.
2. Devraj R, Butler LM, Gupchup GV, Poirier TI. Active-
Learning Strategies to Develop Health Literacy
Knowledge and Skills. American Journal of
Pharmaceutical Education. 2010;74(8).

39. Always check your citations to make sure
they are correct – JAMA style requires
abbreviated journal titles….
2. Devraj R, Butler LM, Gupchup GV, Poirier TI. Active-
Learning Strategies to Develop Health Literacy Knowledge
and Skills. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education.
2010;74(8).
In this case, the journal title was not properly abbreviated. I need to check the correct
abbreviation using JOURNALS IN NCBI DATABASES website in PubMed;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals
2. Devraj R, Butler LM, Gupchup GV, Poirier TI. Active-
Learning Strategies to Develop Health Literacy Knowledge
and Skills. Am J Pharm Educ. 2010;74(8).

40. My NCBI
 Save searches
 Receive email when new articles matching search are indexed in
PubMed
 Many more features!

41. All students search for articles in
PubMed, populate your
EndNote Library and create a
bibliography of at least 5
articles.

42. Questions?