An Artificial Intelligence Tool for Literature Searching. A Roadmap for a Model Research Paper

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: November 2017

Dear friends

November happened to be a month of hectic travels. We did our first International Workshop! This was on invitation of The Union, an International organization that works in the areas of Tuberculosis, Lung diseases and HIV and conducts lots of courses to increase research capacity in these areas. The Union, last year invited us to collaborate with them to teach short courses on PubMed and Reference Management. This was the first of these workshops to be conducted outside India - in Mandalay, Myanmar

It was a lovely experience. The 20 participants were a mix of physicians, researchers and a librarian. They were very interested and committed to learn. I was a bit worried with the language issue, because I had been observing that many who knew English, had a problem with my accent, but thankfully this group was comfortable with my English. I just learned that 19 out of 20 of them successfully completed their assignments too. So, it was overall a successful workshop! The local coordinator Dr. Khine did a great job of organizing the entire event.

A workshop at Myanmar was a great opportunity to combine a short holiday as well. My husband joined me and we went a week early for our holiday, visiting Yangon, Bagan and finally Mandalay. It was a hugely relaxing experience. We felt that Myanmar was a country where people had not yet got trapped in the rat race era that we all seem to be in. There was a sense of peace and no rush. People were wonderful and very respectful. Our tourist guides took immense care of us. We loved noting that in Bagan one Pagoda was being restored with the help of the Archaeological Society of India. Overall a very relaxing trip, and a wonderful workshop too.

Immediately after my return I had to travel to Kolkata and Nagpur. At Kolkata I delivered a lecture on literature searching at a preconference research methodology workshop,at NAPCON. This is a regular event at NAPCON, and I am happy to be part of the team that does this event every year. I thank the organizers for the invitation and the hospitality.

And at Nagpur I was delighted to be invited to be part of a session on Evidence Based Practice, at the conference of the Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. To include the importance of literature searching in a session on EBP, is a great step indeed, because the importance is still not well recognized in our country. I thank the Organizing Secretary Dr Ramakrishna Shenoy and his team for not only inviting me to speak at this session, but also for their hospitality.

If the work we do at QMed sounds exciting and you wish to be involved, do get in touch. While you can help in several ways, one important way to be involved is by making a donation. For most of our events, what we get as a honorarium or charges is really insufficient. By donating, you will help us do so much more. Giving is easy - do check our donation page

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Did You Know

“Smart” Search Service for Journal Articles

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) has come up with a solution for managing information overload – “Semantic Scholar.” It is a free, nonprofit, academic search engine for research papers in computer science and biomedical fields.

When we do a search through it , we can first view some added terms that the engine suggests for our term. Next, we are provided with filters (very similar to PubMed) – date ranges, article types, free articles, and more. An interesting addition is a filter of journal titles / conferences.

If you sign in through your Google, Facebook or Twitter account, it allows you to save search results, add citation, view citation statistics and more. It provides a link to the PDF if the article is free and also a link to similar papers.

All in all, an interesting tool to expand one’s literature searching options!

Click here for detail blog post.

More of "Do you know" blog posts

Interesting Reading

Writing a model research paper: A Roadmap

Tullu M., Karande S. Writing a model research paper: A Roadmap. Journal of Postgraduate Medicine. 2017;63 (3):143-146. Full text

We all know that research writing is something all health professionals have to do in their careers. In research writing there are some basics which are always crucial to maintain and improve the quality of your research. This editorial attempts to cover these essential aspects, offers tips and suggestions on different angles of research writing.

The main focus is on preparing a perfect manuscript for research. As well as other elements of a research paper such as title, abstract, introduction, methodology, discussion, conclusion and also formatting of the research report, which includes title page, acknowledgement, writing order are adequately explained by the authors. It also offers useful tips for prospective authors to enhance their chances of getting their research papers published in eminent peer-reviewed journals.

More interesting articles from our blog posts

From QMed’s Calendar

Talk on Literature Search

• 19th National conference of Pulmonary diseases 2017, NAPCON- Nov 16, Kolkata

Invited lecture

• 42nd Annual Congress of AOMSI - Nov 16, Nagpur. Ms Vasumathi spoke on the importance of literature searching for Evidence based practice, at a special session on this topic at the conference of the Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons of India. It was very well received!

Workshops

• The Union - www.theunion.org - conducts Short Courses on various research skills. One course in which QMed collaborates is for PubMed and Reference Management. QMed did its first International workshop with The Union on Nov 10 & 11 at Mandalay, Myanmar.

QMed Participates

Not a formal participation, but Ms Vasumathi attended the Tenth Anniversary event of Arpan - an NGO that works on the sensitive issue of prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. Arpan’s vision is to have a world free of Child Sexual Abuse. Their mission is to empower individuals, families, communities and society with prevention and intervention skills to reduce the occurrence of child sexual abuse and heal its psychological, social, sexual and physical consequences. In the event they described how they trained children to deal with such potential abuse, and most importantly taught them that any such event was not their fault! It was a great morning, learning about their successes. Health professionals - especially psychiatrists and psychologists would find Arpan a great NGO to be associated with, if they have to treat children with such problems.