Guides: Pharmacy: BIOL 4015: Honours Biomedical Research A

1. Overview

This assignment requires you to critically review and analyse the literature and resources related to your research project and develop the aims and hypotheses for your research proposal.

Always refer to your LearnOnine course page for assignment detail and marking criteria.

In this section, you will learn how to:

develop a research question
breakdown your research question into key concepts
search in the Library catalogue
search in the databases
use Endnote to manage your references

2. Develop a research question

Follow the table below to learn the steps in converting a topic into a research question.

Pick a topic:
Pandemic vaccine challenges

Narrow the topic by being more specific

Type of vaccines?
Types of challenges?
Geography & population (where and who?)

Preliminary literature search

You will need to do more readings on the background information of your topic. You may refer to your textbook or journal articles that you find interesting.

Ask more focus questions

What are the challenges in the development and production of pandemic influenza vaccines?
What are the logistic and economic challenges in developing influenza vaccines during the pandemic?

Pick one and focus

What are the challenges in the development and production of pandemic influenza vaccines?

3. Identifying key concepts and alternative terms

Before you start looking for information, use the following steps to plan your search:

Define any words you are unsure of.
Identify the main ideas (key concepts) in the statement. These will form the foundation of your search.
Then consider alternative words for your key concepts which you can also search for.

Here is your example question:

What are the challenges in the development and production of pandemic influenza vaccines in developing countries?

A table can be a useful strategy for organising key concepts and alternative concepts or synonyms.

Key concepts	Alternative keywords
pandemic influenza	flu pandemic / influenza pandemic / viral pandemic
vaccines	vaccination / immunisation / immunization / inoculation / antiserum
development / production	formulation / manufacture
challenges	restrictions / problems / obstacles

This is not a comprehensive search, you may find more concepts as you begin your search for background information.

4. Plan your search

Next combine your terms:

Connectors
OR	combines all the alternative keywords for the same concept	vaccination OR immunisation
AND	combines different key concepts	"flu pandemic" AND vaccines AND challenges
Truncation, wildcard & phrase search
* (truncation)	finds a word with alternative endings (it must be used at the end of a word)	vaccin* will find vaccination, vaccines, vaccinate
"phrase search" "word + word"	use double quotation marks to search two or more words together in an exact order	"influenza pandemic"
Searching word with a hyphen–	when you search any keyword that spelt with a hypen, search both spellings separately	COVID-19 OR "COVID 19"

Here is the example search:

"pandemic influenza" OR "flu pandemic" OR "influenza pandemic" OR "viral pandemic"
AND
vaccin* OR immunisation OR immunization OR inoculat* OR antiserum
AND
Develop* OR formula* OR manufactur* OR produc*
AND
challeng* OR restrict* OR problem* OR obstacle*

Types of resources

Scholarly journal articles contain highly focused and current research information. They provide peer-reviewed studies and up-to-date information with highly focused research questions.

Note: Not all journal articles are peer-reviewed, below is a table that explains different types of journal articles. Click on the + symbols to reveal more information.

Apply your search: Library Catalogue

The Library Catalogue: advance search can be a useful starting point to do a quick search for peer-reviewed articles. However, searching in Library databases will also give you more comprehensive information on a particular topic.

Below is an example of a search strategy that combines different concepts and synonyms.

Remember to add a new line for each new concept.

Note: You may filter for Peer-reviewed Journals under Refine my results on the left column.

Apply your search: databases

MEDLINE (via Ovid)
A large biomedical database produced by the US National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE is key for health-related topics. Indexed with the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and with records from 1946 to current, primarily for scholarly journal articles. MEDLINE via Ovid is recommended for systematic searches rather than via the free PubMed.

▼ Search example: MEDLINE

MEDLINE has a different search interface than most databases. It requires you to enter all the synonyms for one concept at a time, and use AND to combine them together at the end. Follow the step-by-step guide below:

STEP 1:

Untick Map Term to Subject Heading
Search all the keywords and synonyms using OR in your first concept.
you will see your first concept displayed in Search History above.

STEP 2: Repeat this step for other concepts

STEP 3: In Search History, tick all your concepts and combine them with AND.

Embase (via Ovid)
A large biomedical database with especially good coverage of pharmacology literature and European sources. Journals covered from 1947 and conference abstracts from 2009. Indexed with Emtree thesaurus terms. If searching MEDLINE for a systematic review, it is recommended to also search Embase. From Dec. 2021 includes preprints added to MedRXiv and BioRXiv (not retrospective).

▼ Search example: Embase

Emcare uses the same Ovid search interface and you can search the same way as you search for MEDLINE.
Once you have conducted your search in MEDLINE, you can simply switch the database to Emcare:

STEP 1: Above the search bar, select Change

STEP 2: in the pop-up window, select Embase, then select Run Search.

Scopus
One of the largest multidisciplinary bibliographic databases, Scopus covers peer reviewed journals, trade journals, books and book chapters, conference papers and patents. Material chosen for inclusion meets strict selection criteria such as type of peer review and significance to the field. Also provides backward and forward citation searching, publication metrics and analytical features.

Search example: Scopus

Searching in Scopus is similar to the Library Catalogue (see above). Make sure you select Documents. To add another concept line, select Add search field

search example in Scopus databases: search each concept on a seperate field.

Web of Science
The Web of Science Core Collection allows you to search across a subset of smaller databases that between them provide multidisciplinary coverage of peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Material chosen for inclusion meets strict selection criteria. Also provides backward and forward citation searching, publication metrics and analytical features.

Search example: Web of Science

Searching in Web of Science is similar to the Library Catalogue. Select + Add row to add another concept line.

Web of science databases search example: search each concept in seperate search field

Referencing support

Referencing website
Help with various referencing styles. Find in-text citations and reference examples from different sources such as articles, books and chapters, websites and more.

Always check your Course Outline or LearnOnline site for the citation style required for your course.

Learn more

Watch the video below to learn more about how to plan your search:

Key points from the video

Searching for your whole assignment is not very effective
Mapping out your search is a good place to start
Identify the key concepts in your question or topic
You don't need to search for task words
Use double quotation marks (" ") to search for two or more words together as a phrase
Think about what other words (synonyms and alternative terms) might be used to describe the key concepts
You can use acronyms, but you should search for the full terms as well
To find fewer results, add different concepts using AND (e.g. rural AND Australia)
To find more results, add synonyms or alternative terms, to your search using OR (e.g. "renewable energy" OR solar OR wind)
You can change your search as you find more information
For more information, read the How to plan your search document

How to plan your search (PDF - 276KB)
A short guide on steps you need to plan your search, including how to combine your search terms using OR, AND, NOT.
How to save time searching databases (PDF)
Use this guide to learn how to use truncation and wildcard symbols to get the best results when searching
Watch 'Managing your references' (1:54)
Bibliographic management is a system of organising and managing your references (or citations). Use the software to build a database of references and use these records when you write your assignment using an output style such as Harvard-UniSA.