Writing & publishing a literature review

[orangepink, NP]

Hi! This has been on my mind for a while. I want to try and write a literature review and hopefully get it published. Which, then, is a better source to scour for more articles --- uptodate or the sigma Theta tau website (of which I am a member but my subscription has just expired)? I'm on a tight budget right now and I can only pick one. If you have any other suggestions I would appreciate it.

[pedspnp]

my University allowed me full access to the library after I graduated that may be a option for you

[hugoisacat]

I've never heard of uptodate, we use Ebsco and Ovid as search engines for articles..my place of employment also has access to Ebsco so I use the search engine with their info. There are lots of resources out there, some of which are free. Like the previous post I would also ask your school how long you have access to your sites. Good luck with publishing!

[pattyweb]

From what I have seen of uptodate, it summarizes groups of articles already. I wouldnt recommend it to write a lit review. Have u ever used mdconsult? It also has great articles. Haven't used STTIs site for research, so I can't compare the two.

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

UpToDate.com is a site that provides a literature review of standard medical practice. Referencing that site for a literature review is dubious as it can be viewed as being lazy. If you want to do a literature review on clinical topics, PubMed, for example, is what you should be using. Nursing literature reviews are available via Medline, CINAHL, and many others. Your nursing research class should have covered this topic.

[Anatomatrix]

Here are the databases and search aids that I list for my students. Some are more useful than others if your primary focus is full texts of peer-reviewed scholarly articles. Many of them lead back to PubMed Central so that is a good place to start, but occasionally you can find a free, full text article elsewhere that is not available in PMC. You can use PubMed (as opposed to PMC) to find articles that may not be available as free, full text versions. Take that list and go to your previous college/university or local library. You may be surprised at what you can find by tapping into libraries and their databases.

PubMed Central (Home - PMC - NCBI)

PubMed (Home - PubMed - NCBI)

SCIRUS: Science Specific Search Engine (Scirus - for scientific information)

Google Scholar Search Engine (Google Scholar)

National Library of Medicine (National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health)

NCBI: National Center for Biotechnology Information (National Center for Biotechnology Information)

NCBI Bookshelf, a searchable collection of biomedical ebooks, usually not the current edition of any particular book (Home - Books - NCBI)

MedlinePlus for background info, probably nothing nurses don't already know (MedlinePlus - Health Information from the National Library of Medicine)

Rare Disease Information on MedlinePlus (Rare Diseases: MedlinePlus)

National Organization for Rare Disorders - full reports are fee-based (Welcome to NORD — National Organization for Rare Disorders)

NCBI Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database (OMIM Home)

American Chemical Society CASSI Tool - To find standard abbreviations for many journal titles (CASSI Search Tool Usage Agreement)

Journal Abbreviation Resources on the Web - meta-list of tools to find journal names from abbreviations and vice versa (Journal Abbreviation Resources on the Web)