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Pharmacology and Pathophysiology 1 PHAR 2013 - Library workshop

Introduction (5 minutes)

This workshop will assist you to find high quality research information and references for your Group Research Poster assignment.

Students will be assigned into groups of 4 or 5, based in tutorial groups. Each group will be given an infectious disease to research. The groups will be based to present their research detailing the causative organism and how it was first identified, the symptoms and pathophysiology, what drugs are available to treat it and what new research is being carried out. The results will be presented as a poster on June 10 in Brookman Hall. Assessment will be 50% on poster content, 25% on ability of group members to discuss the poster, and 25% within group assessment. (from Course Information Booklet p 5).

By completing this workshop you will be able to

  1. Search relevant web resources for background information
  2. Use a research article to track the research process and find its journal impact factor
  3. Develop a search strategy
  4. Search Web of Science for relevant research articles
  5. Discover if a journal is peer-reviewed

1. Search relevant web resources (10 minutes)

Activity 1 - search websites

Start to search for information on your topic. An excellent web resource for background information on an infectious disease is the

Another useful starter is

Quality search engines include

2. Use a research article to track the research process (10 minutes)

Search for a specific article and find related research

If you have a starting reference on a topic, a citation database such as Web of Science enables you to trace the development of the research from the references that the authors used to write the paper. It also enables you to find more recent developments by looking at the papers that have cited the article since it was published.

To show this feature we will be using the article from Week 3 as an example:

Citation

Activity 2 - Find citation rates and impact factors

Articles which have been cited a lot are often important in the development of an area of research.

To discover if the journal has an impact factor, look at Additional information in the blue section on the right of the screen. If it has an impact factor, a link will be displayed, which will take you into the database called Journal Citation Reports (JCR). This is currently the only database that provides journal impact factors. Journal impact factors are calculated using aggregate article citation rates.

If you want to explore further

A high impact factor is an indication of high quality and prestige. For example, Nature and Science both have very high impact factors of 30. It is important, however, not just to look at the impact factor itself, but also how the journal compares to other journals in its category.

3. Develop a search strategy (5 minutes)

Often you do not have a starting reference and need to develop your search strategy to do a search by topic to find references. In this section you will be using the infectious disease for your Group research poster, and developing a search strategy to search the database and find articles.

Steps

* See Useful Links at the end of this page for Truncation/Wildcards and Connecting/Combining guides

Our example infectious disease is HIV/AIDS

Sample topic

 

 

Some sample search strategies

Sample 1

Sample Concept 1A

AND

Sample Concept 1B

Sample 2

Sample Concept 1A

AND

Sample concept 2B

Activity 3 - Develop your search strategy

Hint: If you have problems finding background information or with developing alternative words for searching, consult your textbook,Brock biology of microorganisms, and encyclopaedias and other resources such as the ones listed below

4. Search Web of Science for research articles (15 minutes)

Activity 4 - search for articles

Other databases (look at one of these if you have time)

Other databases – access from the Library databases page

5. Discover if a journal is peer-reviewed (3 minutes)

All journals within the Web of Science and some other databases mentioned above are peer reviewed. Most journals within Medline and Embase are also peer-reviewed.

To find out if a journal is peer-reviewed, check Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, available from the Databases page.

Conclusion (2 minutes)

Thanks for your attendance today.

Useful Links

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