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This page provides a step-by-step description of the process.
Search Strategy Checklist and Tips
This page breaks down the process of conducting a search including; breaking down the topic, identifying search terms, conducting your search, combining terms, and reviewing your results.
- Understanding Research Study DesignsIn order to find the best possible evidence, it helps to understand the basic designs of research studies. The following basic definitions and examples of clinical research designs follow the “levels of evidence.”
The Assignment Calculator breaks down research and writing projects into manageable steps based on your due dates. Each step includes hints and "how-to" links. You can also sign up to get text reminders for each step.
Searching the Literature
- PubMedSearches MEDLINE, which is the primary source of journal articles for the health sciences (fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, public health, health care systems, and basic sciences). Coverage is from the 1940s to the present. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
- Ovid MEDLINESearches MEDLINE, which is the primary source of journal articles for the health sciences (fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, public health, health care systems, and basic sciences). Ovid MEDLINE is optimized for advanced literature searches. Coverage is from the 1940s to the present.
- CINAHL Ultimate (Nursing & Allied Health)Covers nursing and allied health journal articles, book chapters, and dissertations, as well as providing summarized evidence-based resources such as care sheets and quick lessons.
- ScopusSearch for information from scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Covers the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
- Google Scholar (Setup connection to get to PDFs)Use Google Scholar to find articles from academic publishers, professional societies, research institutes, and scholarly repositories from colleges and universities. If you are using from off-campus access, change the "Library Settings" to University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Look for the "FindIt@U of M Twin Cities" links in your Google Scholar search results to access full text and PDFs. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
Managing Citations
Using a citation manager can help you to organize your citations and seamlessly create a bibliography at the end of a research paper or manuscript. You can learn about two of the citations mangers commonly used in the health sciences below.
Zotero is a freely available citation manager that allows you to manage your PDFs and create a database of your own citations by importing references or PDFs. Zotero also has a plug-in for MS Word, LibreOffice, or Google Docs which allows you to format papers and bibliographies.
Using Zotero for the first time? Create an account and download the desktop application to get started. See the videos and learn about how Zotero can help you organize your research with the Zotero guides and tutorials.
EndNote desktop is a computer based, desk-top citation manager that is available for purchase with academic pricing through the University Bookstore.
NLM Citation Style
Citing Medicine provides assistance to authors in compiling lists of references for their publications, to editors in revising such lists, to publishers in setting reference standards for their authors and editors, and to librarians and others in formatting bibliographic citations.
- How to Recognize Plagiarism: Tutorials and TestsIndiana University Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests. Includes certification tests which can take up to 2 hours to complete. Many people divide their learning into 4 sessions of about 25 to 30 minutes each. Completing a Certification Test usually takes 5 to 10 minutes.