Clinical Research: Searching for Literature on a Topic

Once you have a set of results, it’s important to evaluate the quality—validity, importance, and applicability—of the evidence presented. To do this, you’ll use critical appraisal to determine which articles are applicable to the care of your patient or best suited for your research. There are questions you may ask yourself when including/excluding articles for your needs. Leading questions for critical appraisal may be of help when it comes to reviewing results.

The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine offers the following questions for your consideration:

• Does this study address a clearly focused question?
• Did the study use valid methods to address this question?
• Are the valid results of this study important?
• Are these valid, important results applicable to my patient or population?

When reviewing your results, it's important to evaluate the quality of the evidence presented in each article. However, it’s equally as important to evaluate the quality and reliability of the journals in which they are found as well as that of their publishers. The sources of the articles should be scholarly in nature, meaning that they provide you with the highest standard of evidence and scholarship to answer your question because they’re written by practitioners and experts in the field. In addition, most scholarly journals are peer reviewed or refereed. When articles go through the peer review process, experts evaluate the content to ensure that the research is sound and make recommendations on whether they should be accepted or rejected for publication by a journal.

Thus, you should be able to identify journals and publishers that should be avoided. Predatory journals and publishers fall into that category. According to Think. Check. Submit., “Predatory publishers or journals are those which charge authors a fee for publication with no intention of providing the expected services – such as editorial or peer review – in return.” Learn more about predatory publishing, including a list of characteristics to watch out for.