Locating the Knowledge Sources in Evidence Based Practice

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Original Editor - User Name

Top Contributors - Wanda van Niekerk and Jess Bell  

This page will provide you with links to the different databases and AI Tools that you can use in your quest to locate the knowledge sources to answer your clinical question. We advise that you watch the two videos in this course to guide you in navigating all these tools.

Introduction

The second step in the evidence based practice model involves finding the knowledge sources. This corresponds to the Acquire component of the 5 A’s. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3792230/

Locating the best evidence that is related to the PICO clinical question can be a challenge. There is a vast amount of information available on the internet but clinicians face challenges such as knowledge about which sources are reliable, Hoffman the time it takes to find the relevant information Hoffman, deciding which information is of high-quality Hoffman and also doubt that a selected resource or search will provide an answer. Viegas Dias C, Jasmins C, Rodrigues D, Heleno B. Clinical questions in primary care: Where to find the answers-a cross-sectional study. PLoS One. 2022 Nov 11;17(11):e0277462.(Hoffman)

Searching 101

• Start with a clearly defined clinical question using the PICOT format.
  • Refresh your memory of how to formulate your clinical question here
  • Links to PP pages and course
• Organise your keywords for your search according to the PICOT Table
• Use synonyms, related terms and/or truncation to broaden your search
  • truncation - adding the first part of a keyword usually followed by a asterisk (*) (Note: databases can have different truncation symbols, so check the help service of the database if you are uncertain). This way any variant spelling of the word is searched for example : rehabilit* will find rehabilitate; rehabilitates, rehabilitation; rehabilitated
• Use Boolean logical operators - AND/OR
  • AND - if all the search terms should be present in each article (different concepts and to be more specific)
  • OR - if any of the search terms should be present in each article (same concept)

Databases

Choose the database that you want to search in. There are traditional databases and grey literature databases. With some of these databases it is free to run a search, whereas others require a paid membership.

Table 1. Examples of Traditional Databases (with links to their websites)

Free to search
Pubmed via Medline Cochrane Library Sciencedirect
Pay to search
Ebscohost Cinahl Scopus Web of Science

Grey literature databases

British Library EthOS https://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do;jsessionid=3C5BCCC18415C5FAA11985DFDAF791B4

Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials

ClincalTrials

Google Scholar

Databases with free articles

Directory of Open Access Journals https://doaj.org/

CORE https://core.ac.uk/

Plos Journals https://plos.org/your-journal-options/

Highwire http://portal.highwire.org/lists/allsites.dtl#H

ScienceOpen https://www.scienceopen.com/

arXiv https://arxiv.org/

CiteSeer https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

OpenDOAR https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Elsevier https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/

Paperity https://paperity.org/

BioMed Central https://www.biomedcentral.com/

JURN https://www.jurn.link/#gsc.tab=0

Dryad https://datadryad.org/search

Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC) https://eric.ed.gov/  - is it open access? most

Semantic Scholar https://www.semanticscholar.org/

Zenodo https://zenodo.org/

Digital Library of the Commons https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/

Computer Science Bibliography https://dblp.org/

EconBiz https://www.econbiz.de/

Scientific and Technical Information Programme: https://www.sti.nasa.gov/

Astrophysics Data System https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platforms

Elicit

SciSpace

Semantic Scholar

Research Rabbit

Litmaps

Connected Papers

Platforms with synthesised, evidence based clinical information

UpToDate – paid https://www.better-evidence.org/

UpToDate – free https://pro.uptodatefree.ir/

Medscape – app with free version

StatPearls https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430685/  https://www.statpearls.com/

Orthobullets https://www.orthobullets.com/

Clinical Knowledge Summaries https://cks.nice.org.uk/

Physiopedia

Platforms with clinical practice guidelines

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance

Platforms with systematic reviews

Cochrane Library https://www.cochranelibrary.com/

Remember to use the HELP files in databases to help you with your search strategy

Where to find full text papers

Follow the link on the platform of the database that you searched

Go straight to the journal or publisher’s website

University library members – make sure you are logged into the university’s online library

Google citation details

E-mail corresponding author

Search for author’s websites

Request paper from author on Research Gate or Academia.edu

Find out if your university library has the option of inter-library loans

Find a convention that works best for you and save the articles that you found and downloaded in a folder and name them so that you can easily find a specific article that you are looking for.

Resources

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