Getting Started
Health Sciences Topic Ideas and Search Terms
Useful sources for finding recent research in all sciences, where you might find interesting topics, are the weekly magazines Science News and New Scientist. Additional magazines worth exploring include Scientific American, Stanford Medicine Magazine, Discover, Harvard Medicine Magazine, and Hopkins Medicine Magazine. In addition, the premier journals Science and Nature include the latest innovative research across the sciences. Premier licensed medical journals include JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), Lancet , BMJ (British Medical Journal), and Nature Medicine. Top open-access medical titles include PLoS Medicine and BMC Medicine.
Once you’ve picked a topic, you will need to think of search terms to use for locating articles and other publications. Use UC Library Search (for books, DVDs and more) and use the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and also (for books owned at the medical libraries) the National Library of Medicine (NLM) terms. Each library subject database also has subject lists/thesauri that can help you precisely search your topic, e.g PubMed has MeSH and BIOSIS Previews has Concept Codes and more.
For those taking library session with Ruth Gustafson, please fill out the following quick library survey also found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/UWP104F-RG
Key Resources for Class
Before diving into your topic, doing some background information on the topic can be very helpful, to help refine your question. Try these resources, not for references in your literature review, but to better develop your personal knowledge on a topic.
- Advanced Search: UC Davis Library CatalogSearch UC Library Search for books, journals (not articles) and other materials available online or in the library.
- Health Sciences eBooksGuide provided by the UCD Health Sciences Libraries to their eBook collections including a select list of major texts, organized by medical specialty.
- PubMed for UC Davis This link opens in a new windowFind a narrative review article by choosing "review" under article type, to understand a topic and have a template for your literature review.
- STAT!Ref Library This link opens in a new windowTDS Health hosts the STAT!Ref library of selected health sciences online reference books and dictionaries, point-of care-tools, and consumer health resources. TDS Health hosts recent editions of selected medical and pharmacy ebooks (e.g., AJCC Cancer Staging Manual, Trissel’s Stability of Compound Formulations, Handbook on Injectable Drugs), dictionaries (e.g., Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, Dorland’s Dictionary of Medical Acronyms) and point of care tools (e.g., EBMcalc, Decker Medicine, and Decker Surgery). Other features include consumer health resources and patient handouts (e.g., AAFP Conditions, Merck Manual), medical ICD-10 coding resources, public health content (e.g., CDC, MMWR, The Community Guide, and Reuter’s medical news feeds. Users are able to cross-search the entire library and filter by content type. A mobile app is available which requires creating a free individual account.
[Coverage: 2015-present] - UpToDate This link opens in a new windowA Point of Care resource (designed for busy clinicians to have a condensed overview on a topic).
- Vetlexicon Clinical Reference This link opens in a new windowA point of care tool for veterinary medicine designed to give a quick overview of a disease.
After doing some background research, dive into your topic and your research question with these databases (see databases for more detailed list):
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
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For any research pertaining to behavior, psychology, perspective, mental health or psychiatry. - CINAHL Complete: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature This link opens in a new windowFor anything like nursing, public health, palliative care, occupational health or allied health.
- Scopus This link opens in a new window
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Multidisciplinary database that also allows citation tracking.
