---

This was published when the organisation was the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Searching for information

Different situations require different forms of evidence. For example, you may require:

• Statistics (e.g., statistics on heart disease in Great Britain).
• Numbers (e.g., number of outlets of pharmacy chains in Great Britain).
• Medical/academic (e.g., information about the treatment of eczema).

Which information resources?

This depends upon what you are researching. You may want to find:

• Health statistics.
• Studies/trials.
• Journal articles.
• Legal information.
• Government publications.
• Theses.
• Conference proceedings.

Procedure

Always follow the same procedure:

• Work out exactly what you are researching.
• Formulate your question/hypothesis or theory and write it down.
• Think about parameters.

If working on a set assignment, make sure you understand what is being asked of you:

• Ask your supervisor.
• Reread seminar/lecture notes for pointers.
• Check your virtual learning environment (e.g. Moodle/Blackboard/Canvas) at university for any additional information posted by your lecturer.

Where to start looking

If you are linked to an academic institution, check their catalogues and speak to a subject librarian.

NHS employees can access journal articles and other resources via their OpenAthens account.

If using the RCPharm library, search across our two databases:

• MEDLINE Complete.
• Biomedical Reference Collection.

If we don’t have the articles you need, ask us to try to obtain them for you via an interlibrary loan.

Search our library catalogue and our e-library.

For charges, please see the library catalogue page (linked above).

• Check reference lists and bibliographies in useful books/articles for additional sources of information.
• See the useful websites section at the end of this resource for some useful sites for accessing ‘grey’ literature.

Using our databases to find journal articles

• Identify keywords, use several and experiment (a particular keyword might retrieve many hits on one database and fewer on another).
• Find synonyms.
• You can limit results by year, age, gender, geography (etc.).
• Use wildcards, truncation and Boolean logic (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’) when searching.
• Keep a record of how you are constructing the search/limiting the results.
• Keep a record of the results, including search history.

See our our library databases’ guide (link to be added soon) and database search tips for more information on using our databases.

Handling results

Having conducted your literature search, you need to manage results.

Why does it matter? If you don’t take note of what you retrieved and from where, you might be in danger of plagiarism.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is usually the result of bad note-taking.

To avoid plagiarism:

• Allow yourself enough time.
• Mark which passages/results you have copied from somewhere else and which are your own and include page numbers.
• Write down the full reference now to avoid extra work later.

Referencing

You can use bibliographic referencing software. If you belong to an academic institution, you will have access to bibliographic management software such as RefWorks and Endnote. If not, you can use software like Mendeley or JabRef; both are free to download from the internet.

In which format should you cite references?

The two popular styles in pharmacy are Harvard and Vancouver.

Your academic institution/publisher will tell you which style you need to use and will give examples (there are usually variations to individual styles across institutions).

If studying at a university, follow the examples given on the library’s webpages exactly, including punctuation.

Otherwise, see useful websites for a selection of useful referencing guides.

Harvard example

• Journal article (print).
• In-text reference: Brazil (2016, p. 213) states that ‘…’.
• Reference list: Brazil, R, 2016. Professional Associations: adapting to remain relevant in a digital age – The Pharmaceutical Journal, 297, pp. 212-215.
• With Harvard, the reference list is ordered alphabetically by author.

Vancouver example

• Journal article (print).
• In-text reference: As Brazil (1) states ‘…’ (p. 213).
• Reference list: (1) Brazil, Rachel – Professional Associations: adapting to remain relevant in a digital age – Pharm J, 2016; 297: 212-215.
• With Vancouver, each work has a unique number, according to the order in which it was first cited; for example (1) shows that this article from The Pharmaceutical Journal was the first work cited. Meaning that (1) will continue to be used if the article is cited again. The reference list is ordered numerically according to when each work first appeared in the text.

Reading your literature

Does the book or article fit your research interest?

• Look at list of contents or abstract.
• Was the article peer-reviewed?
• Has the book been reviewed in relevant journals?

Reading a research article

• Look at the abstract.
• Look at the way the authors designed the study:
  • Is the purpose of the study clear?
  • What is being studied?
  • How have participants been selected and how many are there?
  • How has the study been set up (i.e. has an appropriate control group been used?)?

• Look at the results:
  • How were the results analysed?
  • Was a good description of analytical processes provided?
  • Were the analytical processes appropriate to the material (e.g. were statistics used for quantitative data?)?
  • Did conclusions and data match up? If not, why not?

For in-depth guidance see: How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence-based Medicine and Healthcare which is available in our e-book collection, and our science and research team’s research and evaluation resource.

Useful websites

Data and statistics

• National Data Library.
• NHS Digital.
• The Office for National Statistics.
• The World Bank.
• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Government publications

• UK government publications.

Grey literature

• OpenGrey European database – bibliographical references to multidisciplinary grey literature.
• Trip – a clinical database, including research papers.

Clinical trials

• EU Clinical Trials Register.
• International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.
• Be Part of Research – has information about clinical trials and other research from several different UK registers.
• ClinicalTrials.gov – a registry of worldwide clinical trials.

References to conference papers

• Google Scholar – search by keyword; add ‘conference’ and the year to your search.
• Web of Science – includes a ‘conference proceedings’ citation index from 1990 – check whether your institution subscribes.
• The British Library’s e-Theses Online Service – use for theses.

Referencing

Always follow your university’s/institution’s guidelines. If submitting a paper to a journal, always check their guidelines. Otherwise, see links to useful referencing guides below.

• Vancouver style
  • Imperial College London.

• Harvard style
  • University of Leeds.
  • Glasgow Caledonian University.
  • University of the West of England Bristol.