EBM_Apply the Evidence

1. Online Resources
Binyam Tariku

2. Why Use E-Resources?
• An up-to-date resource
• Convenience
• Extra features
• e.g. search facilities, links to other databases,
supplementary information
• Access to a wider range of material than
might otherwise be available within the
local medical library

3. Electronic Library Resources
• Any library or information resources that
can be accessed electronically, e.g.:
– Electronic journals
– Scholarly databases
– Electronic books
– Hybrid digital collections
– Internet gateways
– Search engines

4. Electronic journals
 Free or fee-based access

5. Open Access Journals
• ‘Open Access’ (OA) journals are scholarly journals that are
available without financial or technical barriers other than
Internet access
• Articles either are directly accessible from the publisher (e.g.
PLOS) or archived in a repository (e.g. PubMed Central)
• In most cases, the copyright is owned by the author, not the
publisher
• Some OA journals are subsidized by academic or
governmental institutions

6. OA Journal Options
• ‘Fee-based OA journals’ require payment by the author
- often paid by a grant or institution; access is free to all
users
• ‘Delayed open access journals’ where the articles are
available between 6 – 24 months
• ‘Hybrid open access journals’ contain some current
articles that are free access

7. Types of Electronic Journals
• Academic
– Refereed journals
– Review journals
– Bulletins
• Non-academic
– Magazines
– Newspapers

8. Refereed journals
Example: Social Science & Medicine
• Used to:
– disseminate research findings
– find out about research by others in your field
– identify methodologies for your own work
• Features
– written by researchers and experts
– aimed at researchers and experts
– articles always cite sources
– peer reviewed
• Strengths/weaknesses
– high-quality, reliable information
– may be slow to be published due to review process
– often fee-based access/may be available via HINARI

10. Review journals
Example: Reviews in Medical Virology
• Used to
– give an overview of the current literature in a specific
research area or discipline
• Features
– give an overview of the current literature in a specific
research area or discipline
– titles usually contain ‘Review’, ‘Reviews’, ‘Advances
in’, ‘Current opinion in’, ‘Progress in’, ‘Trends in’
– have already done much of the literature searching for
you

12. Bulletins
Example: Bulletin of the World Health Organization
• Used for:
– making announcements to a specific audience
– up-to-date information in a very specific area
• Features
– written by in-house staff, or staff writers
– may be issued as required, sometimes intermittently
– contain short reports
• Strengths/weaknesses
– very up-to-date
– standard very variable depending on the bulletin and its target
audience

14. Non-academic resources
• Magazines
– Entertainment, information about popular culture,
product information
– Easy to read, entertaining, information is
lightweight and not always reliable
• Newspapers
– Up-to-the minute information, current affairs,
debate
– Can be valuable sources of certain kinds of
information but inherent problems of all
newspapers

15. Internet Search tools
• Major tools for finding information on the web:
•Browsers
•Directories
•Search Engines
•Meta Search Engines
•Invisible Web or Deep Web

16. Internet Search tools
• Which search tools are needed?
– Gateways
– Databases
– Search Engines

17. Gateway
• A node or network that serves as an entrance to another
network
• Organize information in a structured way in general or
subject categories
• Examples:
– Yahoo www.yahoo.com
– WHO A-Z health topics list
www.who.int/topics/en/
– Essential Health Links
www.healthnet.org/essential-links/
– HINARI/AGORA/OARE

18. Database
• A collection of information organized in such a
way that a computer can quickly select desired
pieces of data
• An electronic filing system
• Traditional databases are organized by fields,
records and files
• Example:
PubMed - a free search tool to over 19 million
citations
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed

19. Search Engine
• A program that searches documents for
specified keywords and returns a list of
documents where the keywords were found
• On the WWW, utilizes automated robotics to
gather and index information
• examples
• Google www.google.com
• Google Scholar (more academic)
www.scholar.google.com
• Yahoo www.yahoo.com

20. The Google search engine
This is the Google search engine. Type
your query into the Google Search box
and click on the Google Search button.

21. Search results on Google
This is how Google presents the results
of your search. Follow the links to the
websites you wish to visit.

22. We have displayed the Advanced
Search option of Google. Note the
various options for refining a search
including Reading level, Results
per page, Language and File Type.

23. Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly
search for scholarly literature. You can search across
many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers,
theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic
publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories,
universities and other scholarly organizations.

24. We have displayed the Advanced
Scholar Search option of Google
Scholar. Note the various options for
refining a search and also that you can
change the number of results per page.

25. Google (search engine)
Advantages
• Searches articles,
books and
webpages
• Has advanced
search options
• Can limit search by
dates, document
types, language,
domain and more
Disadvantages
• No indexing terms
• Huge retrieval of almost
any topic
• No ability to select
citations for downloading
or printing
• Built in relevancy ranking
based on times cited
• Cannot limit to journal
articles

26. Google Scholar (search engine)
Advantages
• Searches journals,
books and more
academic sources
• Can download
individual citations into
bibliographic managers
• Contains citing
information with links to
sources citing a specific
term
Disadvantages
• No indexing terms
• Huge retrieval of
almost any topic
• No ability to select
citations for
downloading or
printing
• Built in relevancy
ranking based on
times cited that…
• May result in bias
toward older literature

27. PubMed (database)
Advantages
• Well indexed using
Medical Subject Headings
(MeSH)
• Can 'explode' terms
• Contains 5,419 current
journals in health sciences
• Includes citations of e-
journals prior to publication
• Can download info to
bibliographic managers
• Can select citations to
download or print
Disadvantages
• Access limited almost
exclusively to basic
and health sciences
journals that are
indexed in the
database
• Does not search full-
text of articles

28. Finding Books, Articles, and
Other Publications
• Books have ISBN numbers (International
Standard Book Numbers).
• Journals (serials or periodicals) have ISSN
numbers (International Standard Serial
Numbers).
• All other publications that don’t have either an
ISBN or ISSN number are called ‘gray literature’

29. Finding Books, Articles…
• Snowball – is the traditional way to collect
references.
• begin by finding a book or journal article
relevant to your work.
• You check the reference list at the end,
select those items that seem most
important, and find them.

30. Finding Books, Articles…
• Effective searching today involves use of
online resources, including:
– Catalogues (Library Catalogues or Online
Public Access Catalogues [OPACs])
– Bibliographic databases (some of which may
be labeled as indexes, citation indexes,
abstract databases, or publishers’ databases)

31. Finding Books, Articles…
Catalogues
• Primarily contain references to books
owned by a library or group of libraries.
• They also include information about grey
literature and about the journals
subscribed to by a library, but not about
the articles in these journals.

32. Finding Books, Articles…
Bibliographic databases
• Primarily provide references to journal articles.
• These databases are usually created by a commercial
company or a special library.
• Today there are thousands of these databases, most
covering a specific sector.
• An example is Medline, which is maintained by the
National Library of Medicine in the US but made
available to the whole world, free of charge.
• Some bibliographic databases include grey literature

33. Finding Books, Articles…
• Look for book references in library
catalogues.
• Look for journal article references in
bibliographic databases.
• Look for gray literature references in both.

34. Why Search Strategy is Important?
• Health care includes the provision of information to
consumers or professionals (reliable, accurate, up-to-
date)
• Information explosion- billions of documents in the
internet; hard to find the ‘needle in the haystack’ and
know which source is best for a specific situation;
• Evidence-Based Practice - clinicians are not using
enough evidence in practice
• Systematic search strategy should be adopted when
dealing with clinical questions to avoid ‘information
malpractice’

36. Example (Steps 1-4)
1. Ask: What health problems are associated with water pollution?
2. Need: scholarly primary research
3. Main Concepts: health, water, pollution
4. Select terms:
– Broader terms: ‘health’, environmental degradation’,
‘agricultural management’,
– Synonyms:
health, illness, disease, etc.
water, rivers, lakes, sea, domestic water, etc.
pollution, ‘oil spills’, chemical, biological, toxicity, etc
– Alternative spellings: none
– Plurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s)
– Capitals: e.g. name of a specific lake, disease, region

37. 1. Ask: Focusing your Question
• What am I looking for exactly? Question before you
search!
• Test search to find out how much information is
available
– If you are finding little information - broaden the
question
– If you are finding lots of information - narrow the
question
2. Define Your Need
• How much information do I need?
• What kind of information do I need?

38. 3. Identify Main Concepts
Concept: ‘Antibiotic’
Concept: ‘Heart Attack’
4. Select Terms
• Use professional standard thesauri/controlled vocabularies
– MESH (Medical Subject Headings):
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html

39. 5. Select a Source

40. Tertiary Sources
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Easy access Lag Time
Ease of use Outdated
Concise Incomplete information
Relatively inexpensive Incorrect interpretation
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Rapid access to the primary literature Lag time
Generally high standard journals Command language varies
Ability to perform complex searches Proficient search skills are needed
Routine updates on selected topics
(alerts)
Can be expensive
Secondary Sources
Primary Sources
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Original data Large volume data
Unbiased information Time consuming
5. Select a Source

41. 6. Search

42. 7. Revise
Review and refine you search
• be prepared to review/revise your search
• keep your search terms in concept
sets/zones but remember to explore subtopics
• try new sources of information
• save the search and citations for future use
• promote use of high-quality resources

43. 8. Manage Results
9. Evaluate-Who? What? When? Where?
Why?
• Download, print, save, e-mail results & search
history
• Cite using a biomedical citation style
• Save search, set up alerts
• Accuracy
• Authority
• Objectivity
• Currency
• Coverage
10. Apply –Answer the question.

44. Boolean (Search) Operators
• Connect terms and locate records containing matching
terms
• Inserted in a search box – AND, OR, NOT
• Must be in UPPERCASE when used

45. AND Operator
(to combine two concepts and
narrow a search)
the AND operator is used to combine two
concepts e.g. hip AND fracture – in the
shaded area; retrieves items containing all
the search terms

46. Boolean AND example

47. Boolean example AND results

48. AND Operator
(to combine three concepts)
the AND operator is used to combine three
concepts e.g. hip AND fracture AND elderly –
in the shaded area.

49. AND 3 terms results

50. OR Operator
(info containing one or other term; will
broaden a search)
renal OR kidney – in the shaded area with the
overlap in the middle having both search terms;
retrieves items containing either search term or
both search terms

51. Renal OR Kidney results
`

52. NOT Operator
(in one term or the other - will
narrow a search)
pig NOT guinea – in the shaded area;
eliminates items in 2nd term (guinea) or both
terms

53. Other search engine functions
• Phrase or proximity searching: “…” or (…)
– allows you to search for an exact phrase
– E.g. “information literacy”
– E.g. prevention and (malaria parasite)
• Truncation/wildcards: *
– allow you to search alternative spellings
– E.g. child* for child OR childs OR children
– E.g. parasite* for parasite OR parasites
• Alternate spellings: ?
– can be used to substitute for characters anywhere in a
word
– E.g. wom?n would search for “woman” and “women”

54. Africa AND (malaria OR
tuberculosis)
malaria tuberculosis
africa
Africa AND (malaria or tuberculosis) – in the shaded area
The (OR) operator retains items in each term and the AND
operator is used to combine two concepts

55. Nesting Concept Sets and Boolean Logic
Set 1: (child$ OR
p?diatric$)
AND
Set 2: (otitis media
OR middle ear
infection$)
AND
Set 3: (antibiotic$ OR
antibacterial
agent$)
Set 1
Set 2
Set 3

56. More Search Techniques
• Field Specific Searching
– author, title, journal, date, url, etc.
• Language Restrictions, Humans or Animals, Gender and
other limits
• Relevancy Ranking
– a grading that gives extra weight to a document when
the search terms appear in the headline or are
capitalized
– every found document is calculated as 100% multiply
by the angle formed by weights vector for request and
weights vector for document found

57. Title

58. Research4Life
• Research4Life is a public-private partnership of
the WHO, FAO, UNEP, Cornell and Yale
Universities and the International Association of
Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers.
• Research4Life is the collective name for
three programs – HINARI, AGORA and OARE.
• It provides developing countries with free or low
cost access to academic and professional peer-
reviewed content online.

59. http://www.research4life.org

60. AGORA
(Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture)
 Online portal to access information on
Agriculture and related sciences
Coordinated by FAO/Cornell University, USA
Free/Low cost to 105 countries
2500 journals / 75 publishers
>1800 registered institutions
Data: 07 2011
http://www.aginternetwork.org/en/

62. OARE
(Online Access to Research in the Environment)
Online portal to access environmental information
Coordinated by UNEP/Yale University
Free/Low cost to 105 countries
Over 3900 journals / 75 publishers and scholarly
societies
Environment and related sciences
1400 registered institutions
Data: 07 2011
http://www.oaresciences.org/en/

65.  HINARI Access to Research in Health program
provides free or very low cost online access to
the major journals in biomedical and related
social sciences to local, not-for-profit institutions
in developing countries.
 HINARI was launched in January 2002 for “free
access” countries (Band 1).
 In Jan. 2003 it was launched to “low-cost"
countries (Band 2).
HINARY Background

66. HINARY Background…
• HINARI enables developing countries to gain access to
one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and
health literature.
• Over 6,400 journal titles are now available to health
institutions in 108 countries, areas and territories
benefiting many thousands of health workers and
researchers, and in turn, contributing to improved world
health.
• Today more than 180 publishers are offering more their
journals.

67. http://www.who.int/hinari/

68. Eligibility
• Band 1/Group A: Institutions in countries included
in the United Nations Least Developed Country
(LDCs) List;
• HDI (human development index) less than 0.63; or GNI
(gross national income) per capita at or below $1600
may be eligible for free access
• Band 2/Group B: Institutions in countries with
either
• GNI per capita less than $5000 or
• HDI at or below 0.67 may be eligible to pay a fee of
$1000 per year
• Some publishers opt out of this option and do not
allow access to their journals
• For details, see www.who.int/hinari/eligibility/en/

71. 1. HINARY

72. 2. Using PubMed through HINARY

73. 3. PubMed/Limit & Advanced Searching

74. More Online Databases
African Journals Online
• Web-address – http://www.ajol.infor/

75. More Online Databases cont…
PsycINFO
Web-address (http://www.apa.org)
• This database indexes 2,150 journal titles,
books, and dissertations from many countries
• It covers the field of psychology as well as
psychological aspects of related disciplines,
including medicine, psychiatry, nursing,
sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology,
linguistics, anthropology, business, and law

76. More Online Databases cont…
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI, Web
of knowledge, Thomson Scientific
[http://isiwebofknowledge.com])
• It indexes 1,700 journals spanning 50
disciplines

77. A literature map of the research
• Organization of the literature enables a
person to understand how the proposed
study adds to, extends, or replicates
research already completed
• A useful approach for this is to design a
literature map
• This map is a visual summary of the
researches that has been conducted by
others

78. A literature map cont…
Maps are organized in different ways
1) Hierarchical structure, with a top down presentation of
the literature, ending at the bottom with the proposed
study
2) similar to a flowchart in which the reader understands
the literature as unfolding from left to right with the
farthest right-hand section advancing a proposed study
3) A series of circles, with each circle representing a body
of literature and the intersection of the circles the place
in which the future research is indicated

79. A literature map cont…
Example: Illustration of a map that shows the literature found on procedural justice in
organizational studies (Janover, 2001)
• This map illustrates a hierarchical design
• The researcher placed her topic in the box at the top of the hierarchy
• Next, she took the studies that she found in computer searches, located copies of
these studies, and organized them into three broad subtopics (i.e justice perceptions
formation, justice effects, and justice in organizational change)
• Within each box are labels that describe the nature of the studies in the box (e.g
outcomes)
• Also within each box are references to major citations illustrating its content
• Consider several levels for the literature map. In other words, major topics that lead
to subtopics and then to sub-subtopics
• After organizing the literature into a diagram, the researcher next considered the
branches of the figure that provide a springboard for her proposed study
• She placed a need to study (or proposed study) box at the bottom of the map. She
briefly identified the nature of this proposed study (procedural justice and culture),
and she then drew lines to past literature that her project would extend

80. Example of literature map