DWLresearch

When looking for health and medicine research it is very easy to stick to the well known databases. However, they don't always cover research from all countries, so if you want search in a more diverse range of databases here are some others you could try: Global Index Medicus "The Global Index Medicus (GIM) provides worldwide access to biomedical and public health literature produced by and within low-middle income countries. The main objective is to increase the visibility and usability of this important set of resources. The material is collated and aggregated by WHO Regional Office Libraries on a central search platform allowing retrieval of bibliographical and full text information." African Journals Online "African Journals OnLine (AJOL) is an online service to provide access to African-published research, and increase worldwide knowledge of indigenous scholarship." SciELO Citation Index "Provides scholarly literature in sciences, social sciences, and...

PubMed recently introduced a new search interface. It's pretty similar to the old interface, so should be fairly simple to pick up. If you'd like more information and tutorials on the new interface then take a look at the PubMed Online Training Page . Below are a few tips you might find useful. How does PubMed do a keyword search? Even if you use PubMed a lot you may not realise how it is searching, as it automatically adds keyword variations and maps your keywords to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). If you want to see exactly what search PubMed has conducted, based on the words you typed in, then you can now do this under the Advanced Search option.  Conduct your search: This will take you directly to the results page: From the results page click on the ADVANCED option just under the search box. Once on the Advanced page scroll down to your search history and click on the Details Arrow: Now you can see exactly what PubMed searched on when inputt...

Not sure what reference management or bibliographic software is? Watch our short introduction: At the University of Leicester we provide access and support for two software packages: EndNote RefWorks Both packages allow you to collect and store references, have a Word toolbar to insert citations and bibliographies and to store and annotate PDFs. Why might you prefer EndNote? It is very popular in certain subjects and you might find that your colleagues/supervisors are using it. If you wish to use the Law referencing style OSCOLA then you will need to use EndNote. If you are using a footnote style that requires short titles - EndNote can be customised better for this than RefWorks, and has a wider range of reference types. Be aware - the University license only covers the use of the EndNote desktop software on university owned computers. You can sync your desktop version with an online account to use at home, but the online account has less features than the desktop...

Over the last two weeks we've been at all the College inductions for new PhD students. Here's some of the top tips shared by current PhD students and supervisors at those events: Surviving and making the most of your first year Concentrate on finding a good research question - your initial research question may change over time. Investigate and make use of training opportunities available (though don't go to things just to tick boxes). Go on Word for Long Documents training . Use reference management/bibliographic software . You have lots of flexibility, but this can be daunting so set mini goals and plan your time. Things will and do go wrong with your research - don't panic! While you are waiting for things to happen use the time for other tasks e.g. training or reading. it is your project and research - show initiative and make plans for where you want to take the research. Talk to lots of people from different departments. Make use of opportunities avai...

If Google Scholar is one of the databases you use for literature searching then we recommend you link it to the University of Leicester library resources. This will make it a lot easier for you to access the full text of books and journals we subscribe to. Watch our 40 second video to find out how:

Critical Appraisal   An important skill to develop as a researcher is to be able to critically appraise other research and research papers. To help with this the library has created a reading list of critical appraisal resources - the list is primarily aimed at health and medicine, but should also be useful to other subjects. The Leicester Learning Institute also provides some resources on developing your critical thinking skills . Systematic Reviews A systematic review is a type of literature review that attempts to find all published and unpublished material on a specific research question. It is a common methodology used in health and medicine, but is also starting to be used in other subject areas. If you are conducting a systematic review then the library could help you: How can we help with your systematic review? [Video, 21 minutes] The library has also created a reading list of systematic review resources . If you would like further help...