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Integrative Cancer Therapies and the American Journal of Chinese Medicine . Articles published in peer-reviewed journals are likely to be of high quality .
In the last decade there has been a rise of open access publishing . Open access publishing means that access to the article is free to the public . Open access publishing arose from a movement to ensure that research sponsored by public funding is freely accessible for public use . It is a way to disseminate scientific literature via the internet , free of charge to the end-user . It maximises the distribution , potential usage and translation of research into practice . However , authors are required to pay to have their work published in open access journals ( often AUD2500-3000 ). This has led to the rise of ‘ predatory ’ journals , that is , low quality profit-seeking journals with little or no peer review and many poorquality papers are now freely available to download .
Identifying quality in research
Research quality varies with :
• the research design – systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials are likely to provide stronger evidence than surveys , interviews and expert opinion
• where it is published - check that the article is from a peerreviewed journal
2 . Tips for finding relevant literature ( quickly )
Relevant research literature can be sourced from websites , from library databases and from databases developed specifically for practitioners .
Websites The first place that many people go for evidence is google . Google searches can return an enormous number of possible sites . For example , looking for evidence on google to support treatment of a client with gestational diabetes could return over 19,000,000 results ; for a client with osteoarthritis , a google search could return nearly 22,000,000 results . A better option would be to search on Google Scholar , the free medical journal search engine indexing journal articles from a variety of databases . It has wide but not comprehensive coverage and the results vary in quality . Consequently , practitioners need to be selective of the websites they choose to open . Websites that may contain quality evidence for practitioners include : . gov – government office or agency ; . edu – education institutions ; and . org – includes some government organisations . Caution should be used when sourcing articles from . com sites ( for commercial entities ) and . net sites ( for computers of network providers websites ).
Useful databases Databases of biomedical and science journals and online books contain articles of relevance for clinical practice . These include :
• PubMed Central ( free ) – full text / open access branch of PubMed ; 5.1 million articles https :// www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pmc /
• The Cochrane Library ( free ) - for systematic reviews ; several thousand high quality reviews https :// www . cochranelibrary . com /
• BioMed Central ( free ) - open access to over 250 peer-reviewed journals in medical and biomedical research http :// wwwbiomedcentral . com
• ADIN : Australian Drug Information Network ( free ) - Australian organisations share information about their drug and alcohol programs , projects and resources https :// www . health . gov . au / contacts / australian-druginformation-network-adin
• Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet ( free ) - information on all aspects of Australian Indigenous health http :// www . healthinfonet . ecu . edu . au /
• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare ( free ) - Australia ’ s national agency for health and welfare statistics and information . http :// www . aihw . gov . au / subjectareas . cfm
Other useful databases that are not freely available may be accessed through a university library for current students or alumni , or through membership of an association including : EbscoHost , Embase , Ovid , Cinahl , Pedro and AMED .
Databases for clinicians Clinicians need efficient search strategies for identifying reliable clinical evidence . A number of databases have been developed specifically to support clinicians in finding high quality research evidence . These include Pubget , EBIMed , Quertle , HubMed , PubFocus , Medsum and Trip . To use these clinical databases effectively , clinicians need to frame their research question in a PICO format :
P - patient / population I – intervention C- comparison O - outcomes
As an example , Trip could be used to search for current research evidence supporting treatment for a 36-year-old male with low back pain . In PICO terms :
P – low back pain I – manual therapies C - exercise therapy O - reduced pain
This search in Trip returned six results ( see Figure 3 ).
136 | vol27 | no3 | JATMS