Pharmacy: Research

HSL librarians and staff have expertise in supporting all phases of the research lifecycle, including support for:

• Preparing Grants – Locate funding sources and conduct background literature reviews.
• Auto Alerts – Establish database alerts for automatic notification on latest news (e.g., new research or grant opportunities).
• Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence – Apply machine learning tools to prioritize literature and reduce the burden of screening literature search results manually.
• Evidence Synthesis – Distill research identified from a broad literature search to best available evidence; facilitate process of converting data from publications into evidence summaries.
• Systematic Reviews – Conduct expert searches, identify tools for managing references and screening literature, draft methods sections, and select appropriate journals for publication.
• Plain Language Summaries – Develop abstracts and summaries in lay language that are accessible to healthcare consumers.
• Abstract Optimization – Draft abstracts to ensure your research is discovered by others in bibliographic databases (e.g., PubMed MEDLINE) by leveraging librarian knowledge on proper keywords and indexing terms.
• Research Impact – Through visualization of data, illustrate institutional and author collaboration, research topics being investigated, and citation impact.

Contact the Health Sciences Library or the pharmacy librarian to learn more about any of the above options or with any research questions. 

While searching for journal articles in scholarly article databases is the best way to find high quality primary and secondary literature, some estimates are that less than ten percent of articles published in core journals are both high quality AND clinically useful. You will still need to be a discerning reader to determine the quality and significance of any literature you find in your searches and apply a critical appraising eye to studies before using them in evidence-based practice or research.  

It is also good to be aware of the inherent biases that may exist in literature. Certain types of studies are more likely to be overrepresented, such as those in the USA and Europe, with positive results, focused on white populations, or by authors affiliated with highly funded institutions. Other types of studies are more likely to underrepresented in the literature, such as those set in the Global South, with negative results, on BIPOC populations, or by authors with less funding. This may mean the first literature results you see are missing perspectives that would be useful, so you'd want run multiple searches in different places to confirm the information you've found and the comprehensiveness of your search. Or, you might also pay particular attention to appraising papers for publication bias when evaluating them.