Not all of the MSK Library’s bibliographic databases include only scholarly, peer-reviewed content. However, resources that index both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed journals generally provide the ability to filter or limit the results to peer-reviewed titles only. In the CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health) database, for example, “Peer Review” is one of the search filter options that may be selected when developing one’s search strategy to limit the search results to content derived from peer-reviewed journals only.

Another way to establish a particular journal’s peer-review status would be to explore the information provided on the journal’s website, usually under its Instructions for Authors. Continue reading →

One of the multiple ways available for searching PubMed is via the PubMed Clinical Queries search interface which offers three ways to filter your resulting citations. Search results are grouped as follows: 1) Clinical Study Categories, 2) Systematic Reviews, and 3) Medical Genetics.

The Clinical Study Categories option is meant to be used by busy clinicians in order to assist them with retrieving clinically relevant, methodologically sound studies that they can use to inform their clinical decision-making. The five categories (or methodological study types) available include: 1) Etiology, 2) Diagnosis, 3) Therapy (which is the default selection), 4) Prognosis, and 5) Clinical prediction guides. Users can also filter their results by scope: a search strategy can be limited to either a broader, more sensitive search that will return a larger number of results or to a narrower, more specific search that will return fewer results that are more precise.  These Clinical Study Categories search filters or “canned searches” are based on the research of Dr. RB Haynes and his bioinformatics colleagues from McMaster University in Canada, and have been updated and re-validated over the years. Continue reading →