PHAR 462 - Dakkuri

Ferris State University Library for Information, Technology and Education (FLITE).

PHAR 462 - Dakkuri
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	Finding Medical Research Articles

Gathering Background Information

If you are looking for background information on your topic from reference books such as encyclopedias, manuals, handbooks, etc., there are many great resources available online, as well as in print. For print books, please check the Online Catalog and search by title, subject, or keyword. For online reference books, the electronic medical library
Stat!Ref contains some of the top medical reference books, including pharmacy resources such as AHFS Drug Information, Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, Handbook on Injectable Drugs, and more!! Also, many online encyclopedias are available through the Electronic Reference Resources webpage.

FLITE Databases

To find drug-related and other medical research articles, it is essential to use the appropriate databases that provide access to many citations and full-text articles. If you are doing research from off-campus, you will need to log-on to use databases licensed by FSU. Click here for information on off-campus database access.

PubMed thumbs up
This is the largest biomedical database, with over 17 million citations. Search for drug information by using the brand name, generic name, or substance name. Select the Mesh Database to perform more subject-specific searches and send terms to the PubMed search box. There are excellent MeSH tutorials available to help you use this search strategy.

Click here for a PubMed Database Guide.

Health Reference Center
This database contains many articles in full-text. The default search is a subject guide search. In the subject guide search you can only search one term at a time. The subject term for searching drug information varies between brand name and substance name. Switch to the Basic Search or Advanced Search if you are having difficulties finding the subject term and perform a keyword search, then select a pertinent article to find the proper subject heading. Also use the Basic Search or Advanced Search if combining search terms. In the Advanced Search you can limit your articles to full-text, as well as peer-reviewed.

CINAHL
The Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) currently gathers information from more than 1800 journals. Use the CINAHL Headings subtab to get more subject-specific information on various drugs. You can narrow and expand your search using the options available in this database.

Click here for a CINAHL Database Guide.

International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA)
IPA provides article summaries taken from over 750 journals selected by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. Browse the Index for drug names (generic or brand names), or for substance names. Combine searches for different drugs by using the Search History tab and combining searches using and.

Click here for an IPA Database Guide.

IDIS (Iowa Drug Information Service)
This database requires you to log-on individually. Please call 231-591-3602 for user name and password. IDIS contains citations and full-text from over 200 journals pertinent to pharmacy, with a focus on retrieving specific drug information and drug treatments for diseases. For each type of search selected there is a valuable description about the purpose of the search, providing an indicator of the type of search terms that should be used.

Click here for an IDIS Database Guide.

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe
Using this database, under Academic Search Forms you can opt to specifically search Medical sources. Your options include Medical News or Medical Journals. Note that the number of medical journals indexed is small compared to other databases, so you may wish to search medical news to obtain current information. Lexis-Nexis defaults to searching the last 6 months, so be sure to change the time period if you prefer to search a broader date range.

Obtaining the Full-Text of Articles

In some databases you will see an option for a Text version of the document or a PDF version. In general, the PDF version is preferable as it is most often a scanned version of the original and will therefore contain the graphics. When e-mailing, printing, or saving a group of articles, be sure to select the full-text or PDF option if available.

Some databases contain little full-text, but allow you to link out to Ferris' holdings or the interlibrary loan request form. You will notice the Find it! links following individual citations that will indicate the availability of the article online, in the library, or the need to interlibrary loan the article. Click on the Go button and you will be taken to the online version, library holdings record, or interlibrary loan form to obtain the article you desire.

Evaluating your Articles

Before requesting articles from interlibrary loan, please review the abstract and make sure that the article is on-topic. Also, please insure that the article is in a language that you speak, as some databases, such as PubMed index many non-English articles that have abstracts written in English. After you have evaluated the topical coverage and language of the article, please do not hesitate to request it through interlibrary loan if it is not available on campus.