Country wide access to databases / journals: an urgent need

Country wide access to databases / journals: an urgent need

In 2013, I  had written a blog post - Can you get me this article please?  where I had mentioned about the struggle for getting full text articles, especially if one is not attached to a library that subscribes to several journals. Anyone who keeps up with published literature, carries out research or writes for publication, will obviously read articles. And rightly so. In five years, I believe that some libraries in India would have added more journals to their subscriptions. I am sure many have not added more. Some would have even cut down on their list. Irrespective of…
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Medical YouTube Videos and Methods of Evaluation

Medical YouTube Videos and Methods of Evaluation

Drozd B, Couvillon E, Suarez A. Medical YouTube Videos and Methods of Evaluation: Literature Review. JMIR medical education. 2018 Jan;4(1). Do your patients check YouTube videos for getting health information? The answer is a most likely "Yes". Not only would they get them directly on YouTube, but their friends would forward them YouTube links too. How many of them think about the authenticity / quality of these videos? And if they did, how many would know how to evaluate them and then make a decision to view them? Here is a review article where the authors have identified 37 studies…
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Literature searching and the ideal researcher

Literature searching and the ideal researcher

A student, academician or a practitioner of any health sciences stream often needs to search the literature. An ideal researcher should spend a small percentage of time in this activity, and much more on the main research and writing. What is the profile of an ideal researcher in this context?  Someone who has the "information needs", clearly laid out.  Before searching the literature, one has to document the information need clearly. We need to identify literature to reference in the a) introduction and discussion areas, and b) literature that would be closest to our main area of work. The literature…
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