Literature Review (Where to start)

[reluctantoptimism]

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I need to do a literature review on a disease process and I do not know how to begin. I have a research a disease process and how the disease impacts a specific population but I'm completely stumped as to how to do my research.
Does anyone have any advice?

 

[Goro]

Go to:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

After you type in your subject, you'll get X number of citations.

You can weed out foreign language, selector FOR reviews (very helpful), species, adults vs children etc by using the filters that appear on the far left side of the screen.

When you click on an individual paper, on the right side of the screen you'll see a box entitled "recent activity"; this will give you papers most closely related to the paper you clicked on.

I need to do a literature review on a disease process and I do not know how to begin. I have a research a disease process and how the disease impacts a specific population but I'm completely stumped as to how to do my research.
Does anyone have any advice?

 

[chemist16]

Google Scholar is also very helpful. Check out the most recent papers relevant to your topic, read them, and check out their cited works. Word of caution though - don't just copy their cited works into your own work. You should be synthesizing concepts and outlining the bigger picture.

 

[efle]

Go to:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

After you type in your subject, you'll get X number of citations.

You can weed out foreign language, selector FOR reviews (very helpful), species, adults vs children etc by using the filters that appear on the far left side of the screen.

When you click on an individual paper, on the right side of the screen you'll see a box entitled "recent activity"; this will give you papers most closely related to the paper you clicked on.

I thought SDN didn't allow people to use us to do their homework...

 

[WedgeDawg]

If this is for a lab, talk to your PI and see if they can give you 2-4 articles (preferably recent review articles) about the subject. Then read the review and look at the associated citations for the specific parts that you're interested in. Before you know it, you'll have read >50 articles on the subject and want to jump off a - I mean you'll have a solid foundation of knowledge for the subject at hand and can make more informed decisions about which specific avenues of research you need to look at to accomplish your goal.

If you don't have a PI, search pubmed for a single solid (recent) paper related to what you're interested in, and you can probably citation jump your way to a review paper, and then start from there again.

 

[Dormouse]

See if you can find good review papers on the topics. Take note of the major publications cited which will be the main breakthrough findings related to the disease, skim the abstracts of those publications, take notes, arrange your notes in a logical order, and then re-write out your notes in a prose format.

 

[Goro]

OP didn't ask for a particular subject, like COPD. If so, I would have simply said "PubMed is your friend".

I thought SDN didn't allow people to use us to do their homework...

 

[NickNaylor]

As @Goro mentioned, PubMed is the first place to start. Find a good review article that covers the topic you're trying to do a lit search for. Check out the references cited in that article for additional information - personally, I prefer seeing information from primary articles vs. review articles to ensure that the data reported in a review article is accurate. Rinse and repeat. This will get you a pretty good start on a lit review.

A great resource to use for this kind of thing is Web of Science. It's a paid service, but many large institutions pay for access. It will essentially allow you to easily look up articles that have been cited by other articles and the articles a particular article cites. This is more or less identical to the above process but is slightly less tedious.

 

[Spinach Dip]

www.en.wikipedia.org

 

[hoihaie]

Find the most recent review article on that subject and then look at the references

 

[chemist16]

A great resource to use for this kind of thing is Web of Science. It's a paid service, but many large institutions pay for access. It will essentially allow you to easily look up articles that have been cited by other articles and the articles a particular article cites. This is more or less identical to the above process but is slightly less tedious.

Web of Science is also very well integrated with EndNote, which is very well integrated with Microsoft Word. So when you're writing the review, you can import the citation directly from Web of Science to EndNote, which inserts it into your paper whenever you want to cite that source. The best thing is, EndNote also changes the citations and the bibliography when you move stuff around (if you're using a numerical citation style). That last part can save you countless headaches down the road - especially when you border on a hundred citations.