In general, a good deal of your research relating to nursing topics will need to meet some (or more likely ALL!) of the following criteria:
The medical profession is one of the fastest changing work environments. New research, discoveries, and medicines require health professionals to always seek and use the most current and up-to-date information available.
In general, limit your results to the last five years.
Scholarly journals are the method by which researchers share the results of their work. After experiments and research are conducted, the results analyzed, etc. the researchers write an article that gives readers an overview of recent research on the given topic, an outline of the research question the researcher hoped to answer, the methods used to conduct the research and the analysis of that research. Finally, the researchers offer their conclusion, what they actually learned and what the next steps for additional research might be.
If you need to use research articles in your project, look for headings in the article that reflect those areas: Title and Author information; Abstract; Introduction and/or Literature Review; Method or Methodology; Results or Findings; Discussion, Comments or Conclusion; and References - usually a high number of them!
Nursing students will frequently need to obtain articles that share this original research. On an information literacy side note, these original research articles are also considered primary sources - the information shared via the articles did not exist until the research was conducted.
Evidence-based practice is a concept that is very important for the medical professions and much of this evidence comes from these articles.
Video Summary of Original Research Articles and Access Tips. (Recorded by former JCC librarian Carleen Huxley)
Scholarly journals may also be referred to as academic. Some databases will simply label these as journals.
Author(s) typically have advanced degrees relating to the subject matter, as do the editors. Many scholarly sources are peer-reviewed (sometimes referred to as refereed), meaning content is edited and approved for publication by a team of reviewers whose members have similar advanced credentials in relation to the subject. Extensive lists of citations and notes are included.
Content may be difficult to fully comprehend without fairly extensive background knowledge of the content matter, although this varies with the discipline and the type of article encountered (primary/original research vs. reviews/overviews).
One criteria relating to the evaluation of information is the authority of the information. Scholarly, peer-reviewed sources are considered to be VERY authoritative due to the required background of the authors and editors, as well as the peer-review process.
Our nursing subject databases provide some helpful search refinements, often called limits, which will help you limit your search results.
For example, on the Advanced Search screen of CINAHL, among many limits, you have the option to: