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Information retrieval CHAPTER 23
The quality of health- and medicines-related journals is variable. Some journals do not adopt a peerreview process and can publish studies that are not
scientifically robust. Even the process of peer review
cannot be guaranteed to pick up some things such as a
methodological flaw or investigator bias. Citation indexes and impact factors can be used to help assess
the quality of a publication (see below). High-impact
factor journals such as the British Medical Journal,
The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine,
Nature and the Journal of the American Medical
Association are considered prestigious publications.
Primary reference sources of particular relevance to
pharmacy practice include the Pharmaceutical Jour-
nal, International Journal of Pharmacy Practice and
the American Journal of Health-system Pharmacy.
Because a primary reference source presents the
paper in its original form, the reader has the opportunity to critically appraise and analyse the study or
article in order to develop a conclusion on its merits.
However, this does necessitate a degree of critical
appraisal skills and, for example, some knowledge of
scientific methods and statistics.
Open access academic information
The traditional way in which research is published, as
described above, can be summarized as follows: the
authors write up their research into a paper and submit it to a journal, the paper is peer reviewed to ensure
quality, the publisher then publishes the paper in
the journal. The costs are normally paid for through
the income generated by subscriptions to the journal.
An alternative to this model now exists in the form of
open access publishing. In the open access publishing
model, the authors make the research available on the
web, via a repository or in a freely accessible journal,
with authors paying for this privilege and the process
bypassing the publisher completely. Some journals
following the ‘traditional’ model of publishing will
also make papers available to all in an open access
style provided the authors meet the costs. Understandably, academics and publishers often have differing views on whether open access publishing is a good
thing or not.
Additionally, all universities in the UK are now
expected to maintain an open archive of the peerreviewed literature they have produced. Some may
also use this archive to store internally produced technical reports that have not been published elsewhere
(or that may be undergoing the review process or are
‘in press’). Many researchers, academics and academic
research groups also maintain web pages listing their
publications. A good strategy for locating papers written by a particular academic author or their affiliation
is to try and find their personal, departmental or research group web page. There is often a link to their
publications, sometimes with full text available.
Secondary reference sources
Secondary information sources can be used to locate
primary literature. In general, secondary reference
sources are searchable resources that index and/or
abstract from the primary literature. Some are
equipped with alerting systems, which scan selected
journals as soon as they are published and send
summarized abstracts directly to users to help them
maintain a knowledge – albeit superficial – of new
developments from a large pool of journals. Nowadays, the data format used for providing users with
frequently updated content is known as a web feed. A
recent addition to web feeds is the RSS (really simple
syndication) feed, which contains either a summary
content from an associated website or the full text.
RSS can be read using software called RSS reader or
feed reader. The user subscribes to a feed by entering
the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS
icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds
regularly for new content, downloading any updates
that it finds.
Secondary reference sources are generally searchable electronically but may also be available in hardcopy format. Secondary reference sources include
commercial academic databases, resource gateways
(collections of sites that have been reviewed and in
some sense approved by the gateway maintainers) as
well as the more recent academic search offerings of
Internet search engines such as GoogleÔ Scholar and
Microsoft
Academic databases
Unlike the Internet, which as discussed above is
effectively an uncontrolled repository for a large assortment of material, an academic database is a welldesigned catalogue created and maintained by trained
personnel. A database, in essence, is a set of searchable records, with each record describing an item in an
organized collection. Nowadays records are commonly maintained as a set of virtual cards in a computer database. Two main categories of academic
database exist: the ‘bibliographic’ database contains
Ò
Live Academic.
249
SECTION THREE Pharmacy prescribing and selection of medicines
information in summary form (the abstract) about
journal articles, books and other materials; the ‘fulltext’ database provides access to electronic versions
of the full text of documents. The abstract in theory
provides the most important information about the
item to enable the user to make a quick and informed
decision as to whether they need to look at the full
text. Bibliographic databases cover a greater amount
of material compared to full-text databases, thus offering a way of pinpointing hard-to-find papers from
the vast amount of published literature.
The purpose of an academic database is to enable
users to systematically search the records so that specific search terms can ultimately ‘unearth’ relevant
items. In the case of a scientific paper,for example, its
record might contain details of title, authors, journal
name, date of publication, page numbers, subject classification, keywords, abstract and so on. Each of these
categories in a database is called a ‘field’. The record
then is a collection of several fields of information
about the item, be it a book or a journal article. The
process of creating and adding records to an academic
database is known as indexing and each record is
called a citation.
Some journals ask for submitting authors to provide a set of keywords, usually corresponding to
MeSH headings, for the purpose of indexing and classification. MeSH is the National Library of Medicine’s controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of
sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical
structure that permits searching at various levels
of specificity. MeSH descriptors are arranged in both
an alphabetical and a hierarchical structure. At the
most general level of the hierarchical structure are
very broad headings such as ‘Anatomy’ or ‘Mental
Disorders’. More specific headings are found at
more narrow levels of the eleven-level hierarchy,
such as ‘Ankle’ and ‘Conduct Disorder’. There were
24 767 descriptors in the 2008 MeSH. There are also
over 97 000 entry terms that assist in finding the most
appropriate MeSH heading; for example, ‘Vitamin C’
is an entry term to ‘Ascorbic Acid’.
Many academic databases now exist, and although their search interfaces might at first look very
different, similar tools are usually found on each. To
the novice user, academic search interfaces can appear somewhat intimidating; the form looks quite
complex and appear s as an advanced search screen.
But the format of the academic database search
screen enables the user to simultaneously search
for something specific (e.g. the keywords) in any of
the database’s fields. Sometimes each text entry box
Box 23.4
Checklist for exploring the search interface
and other features of an academic database
new to the user
The user should take the time to find out:
*
How to combine keywords
*
How to search in different fields
*
How to limit searches
*
How to keep track of useful citations
*
How to export citations
*
What format the information can be viewed in
*
How the items might be retrieved
*
Whether full text is available
*
Whether there is a browse feature for scanning
specific journals
*
Whether an article’s references are also available
as links or in full text
*
Whether there is a ‘cited by’ option
*
How easy it is to move between articles
in the interface corresponds to a field. Sometimes
the user has to use Boolean operators (see below).
At times the user has to employ some complex syntaxtolinkkeywordstotherequiredsearchfields.
Not all the fields n eed be searched during a particular search exercise but combining search terms and
using the fields wisely does enable the user to better
pinpoint records. For example, restric ting the keywords to particular fields such as the title or abstract
can help focus the search by returning only those
articles where the keywords are a prominent feature.
A new database resource can be explored by examining helpful features that enhance efficiency
(Box 23.4 ).
Boolean logic defines logical relationships between
terms in a search. The conventional Boolean search
operators are and, or and not. They can be used to
create a very broad or very narrow search (Box 23.5).
To make better use of Boolean operators, one can use
parentheses to nest query terms within other query
terms. Search terms and their operators can be
enclosed in parentheses to specify the order in which
they are interpreted. Information within parentheses is
read first, followed by the information outside the
parentheses. For example, when one enters (aspirin
OR ibuprofen) AND analgesic, the search engine
retrieves results containing the word aspirin or the
word ibuprofen together with the word analgesic in
250
Information retrieval CHAPTER 23
Box 23.5
Boolean operators that can be used when
searching academic databases
And Combines search terms so that each search result
contains all of the terms. For example, pharmacy and
education finds articles that contain both pharmacy
and education
Or Combines search terms so that each search result
contains at least one of the terms. For example,
medicine or drug finds results that contain either
medicine or drug
Not Excludes terms so that each search result does not
contain any of the terms that follow it. For example,
painkiller not paracetamol finds results that contain
painkiller but not paracetamol
the fields searched by default. If there are nested
parentheses, the search engine processes the inner-
most parenthetical expression first, then the next,
and so on until the entire query has been interpreted.
For example, ((aspirin OR ibuprofen) AND analgesic)
OR painkiller.
Once a search is conducted and results returned,
most databases offer a facility for marking and
exporting useful records. Users can then decide
which references are worth retrieving as full papers.
Most databases traditionally classified as bibliographic will automatically he lp retrieve the full paper through icons such as ‘Check for Full Text’ and
‘View Full Text’. This is because databases can link
up with the other subscribed resources available to
users who might be logged in as members of a
library or similar information service. If a subscription is in place for a particular item, and the
full text of the particular article is available within
the database, a link to the full-text item will be
automatically inserted into the page at the appropriate point. Thus access to the full text of the
article can be virtually seamless for the user. This
makes the boundaries between full-text and bibliographic resources now somewhat blurred. Full-text
resources, as the name sugges ts, provide access to
full papers. They come from individual publishers,
as individual titles, or through subscription agents,
who provide a single point of access to electronic journal titles from different publishers and
disciplines.
Citation indexes and impact factors
As referred to above, citation indexes and impact
factors can be used to help assess the quality of a
publication. A citation in a paper is the formal acknowledgement of intellectual debt to previously
published research. It generally contains sufficient
bibliographic information to uniquely identify the cited document. An obvious example of a citation is a
reference listed at the end of a scientific research
paper. Commercial databases such as the Science Citation Index
more comprehensive Journal Citation Report
Ò
(SCI) (covers 3700 journals) and the
Ò
(JCR)
(covers more than 7500 journals) use software to
track the total number of times that a journal has been
cited by all journals included in the database to return
‘total cites’ for each journal. In addition they calculate
article counts for each journal covered in the database,
each article being a significant item (e.g. a research
paper) published in the journal.
Citation and article counts are taken to be important indicators of how frequently current researchers
are using individual journals. From such information,
SCI and JCR can then return the impact factor for a
journal in any specific year. The impact factor in brief
is the average number of times that articles from the
journal published in the preceding 2 years have been
cited by others. In this way, SCI and JCR are considered to provide a systematic way of evaluating the
world’s leading journals and their impact in the global
research community. The notion, well accepted in the
scientific community, is that the higher the impact
factor, the ‘better’ the journal. What then is the implication for journals with a low impact factor (true of
a number of pharmacy publications)? Readers should
note that a number of pharmacy journals, although
well used in the pharmacy research community, are
not included in large academic databases and thus
neither indexed nor rated for their impact.
Box 23.6 lists the main health- and medicines-
related databases.
Tertiary reference sources
Information from primary reference sources, perhaps
retrieved using a secondary reference source, can in
due course come to be included in textbooks and
similar tertiary publications. As mentioned above, tertiary reference sources provide an overview of a topic
in a condensed readable form with authors drawing on
the primary literature for material. Examples are textbooks, drug compendia and formularies. A wide range
251
SECTION THREE Pharmacy prescribing and selection of medicines
Box 23.6
Secondary reference sources for health- and medicines-related publications. Each database may
be searchable via a number of interfaces such as CD-ROM and the Internet
BioMed Central provides full access to its portfolio of 186 ‘open access’ journals
The Cochrane Library is part of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit and independent organization, dedicated to
making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available worldwide. There is a collection of databases
to search. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) represents a high level of evidence on which to base clinical treatment
decisions. In addition, there is Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE; other reviews); Cochrane Central Register of
Controlled Trials (CENTRAL; clinical trials); Cochrane Methodology Register (CMR; methods studies); Health Technology Assessment
Database (HTA; technology assessments); NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHSEED; economic evaluations)
CrossFire is a chemical information solution, covering over 200 years of primary literature. The two databases, Beilstein (organic) and
Gmelin (inorganic), collectively contain data on structures, reactions, facts and citations for more than 11 million organic, inorganic
and organometallic compounds
Ò
DrugDex
Embase is a major biomedical and pharmacological database, produced by Elsevier Science. It indexes over 5000 biomedical journals
from 70 countries. Coverage dates back to 1974 and it includes over 11 million records. There is particular emphasis on European
literature and it is renowned for extensive coverage on drug research, pharmacology and pharmaceutics. The controlled vocabulary for
searching (using Emtree) is distinct from that used by Medline. More than 80% of recent records include full author abstracts. The
database is updated daily and the lag time between publication and database entry is generally shorter than with Medline
International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA) is a comprehensive collection of pharmacy literature including information on drug use
and development, pharmacy practice and education. IPA is produced by an information company called CSA and offers coverage of
pharmacy literature from 1970, covering 800 health journals published worldwide. The scope of the database ranges from clinical
pharmacy to legislation, sociology, economics, ethics and information processing and literature
Intute: health and life sciences is a free online service providing access to ‘best’ web resources for education and research, evaluated
and selected by a network of subject specialists. The 31 000 resource descriptions listed are freely accessible for keyword searching or
browsing
Iowa Drug Information Service (IDIS) indexing/full-text system is a bibliographic database produced by University of Iowa, USA. It is
an indexing service for 200 premier English language medical and pharmaceutical journals but only those articles relating to drug
therapy in humans are indexed
Medline is widely regarded as the premier database for bibliographic and abstract coverage of biomedical literature. It is created by the
US National Library of Medicine (NLM
explosion capabilities to search citations from approximately 5000 current biomedical journals. Coverage dates back to 1966. Most
records are from English language sources or have English abstracts. Medline is the largest component of PubMed, the freely
accessible online database of biomedical journal citations and abstracts also created by the US. PubMed contains a number of additional
services to Medline
Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database provides evidence-based, clinical information on natural medicines
Pharm-line
pharmacists at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, London. It started in 1978 and comprises more than 180 000 abstracts from over 100
major English language pharmaceutical and medical journals. About 11 000 new records are added each year. The abstracts are
indexed using keywords from the specially developed Pharm-line Thesaurus, also used by many medicine information pharmacists to
index their in-house information. All medicines information centres in the UK have access to Pharm-line and to the user guide that gives
detailed search instructions
Science Direct contains over 25% of the world’s science, technology and medicine full-text and bibliographic information. It offers a
journal collection of over 2500 titles. In addition, the ‘Backfiles’ program offers the ability to search a historical archive of over 6.75
million articles from the desktop, to Volume 1, Issue 1. The collections contain 4 million articles prior to 1995, and 2.75 million articles
from after 1994
provides monograph-type drug information on FDA-approved, non-US, over the counter and investigational medicines
Ò
), and uses MeSH (medical subject headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and
Ò
is a database for medicines management, pharmacy practice and prescribing produced by medicines information
252
Information retrieval CHAPTER 23
TICTAC is a visual drug identification database provided by Virtual Health Network. It covers medicines, illicit drugs, veterinary products,
vitamin and food supplements, herbal remedies and products that might be mistaken for drugs such as confectionery. It contains
detailed information on over 23 000 tablets and capsules or related products with over 65 000 high-quality images of those products
Ò
Web of Science
Social Sciences Citation Index; Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Index Chemicus; and Current Chemical Reactions. Science
Citation Index Expanded is a multidisciplinary index to the journal literature of the sciences, fully indexing over 6650 major journals
across 150 scientific disciplines. It includes all cited references captured from indexed articles. In addition, the Science Citation Index
Expanded provides access to current information and retrospective data from 1900 to the present
consists of five databases of information gathered from scholarly journals, namely: Science Citation Index Expanded;
of tertiary reference sources covering all aspects of
health- and medicines-related topics exist. Key publications include Martindale: The Complete Drug Ref-
erence, and the British National Formulary (BNF).
There are also textbooks covering specific subject
areas such as drug interactions, adverse drug reactions,
pharmaceutical compatibility and stability, complementary medicines and drug use in specific patient
populations (e.g. children, the elderly, renal impairment, pregnancy and breastfeeding). Table 23.5
lists some of the key tertiary drug information
resources for practising pharmacists in the UK.
Table 23.5 Key tertiary drug information sources for pharmacy inquiries (further details available on publishers’ websites)
Textbooks are important for locating established
knowledge or information that is not rapidly changing.
The information in a tertiary source is updated against
new information or knowledge documented in the primary literature only once every 3–4 years, when the
book is updated and published as a new edition. Thusit
can take 5 or more years for new research findings to
filter into medical textbooks. In addition, most books
are out of date almost as soon as they are published.
Time constraints in editing and publishing mean that it
takes a year or more between the author’s submission
of a manuscript and actual publication of the textbook.
Type of resource Authors/editors Publisher
Core resource
Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference Sweetman S Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
pharmpress.com
British National Formulary Mehta DK Jointly by British Medical Association and the
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain;
http://www.bnf.org
Monthly Index of Medical Specialities N/A Haymarket Business Subscriptions; http://
www.haymarketbusinesssubs.com/
The OTC Directory N/A Proprietary Association of Great Britain; http://
www.pagb.co.uk/
Chemist & Druggist Directory N/A CMP Medica; http://www.chemistanddruggist.
co.uk/
Therapeutics
Goodman and Gilman’s Pharmacological
Basis of Therapeutics
Avery’s Drug Treatment Speight TM, Holford NHG Blackwell Publishing; http://www.
Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics Walker R, Whittlesea C Elsevier; http://www.elsevier.com
Applied Therapeutics: The Clinical Use of
Drugs
Therapeutic Drugs Dollery C Churchill Livingstone; http://www.
Brunton L, Lazo J, Parker K McGraw Hill; http://www.mcgraw-hill .co.uk
blackwellpublishing.com/
KodaKimble MA, Young LY, Kradjan
WA, Guglielmo BJ
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; http://www.
lww.co.uk/
elsevierhealth.com/
Continued over
253
SECTION THREE Pharmacy prescribing and selection of medicines
Table 23.5 (Continued )
Clinical Medicine Kumar PJ, Clark ML Saunders Ltd.; http://www.elsevierhealth.
com/
Oxford Textbook of Medicine (3 vols) Warrell DA, Cox TM, Firth JD, Benz EJ,
Weatherall D
Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine Longmore M, Wilkinson IB, Turmezei
T, Cheung CK
Oxford University Press; http://www.oup.co.
uk/
Oxford University Press; http://www.oup.co.
uk/
Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Treatment Porter RS Merck and Co.; http://www.merck.com/
Adverse drug reactions
Meyler’s Side-Effects of Drugs: The
Aronson JK, Dukes MNG Elsevier; http://www.elsevier.com
International Encyclopaedia of Adverse Drug
Reactions and Interactions
Meyler’s Side Effects of Drugs Annuals Aronson JK Elsevier; http://www.elsevier.com
Adverse Drug Reactions Lee A Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
pharmpress.com
Children’s doses
British National Formulary for Children Mehta DK British Medical Association, Royal
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, Royal
College of Paediatrics and Child Health; http://
www.bnfc.org/
Neonatal Formulary: Drug Use in Pregnancy &
the First Year of Life
Paediatric Formulary Guy’s, St Thomas’ and Lewisham
Northern Neonatal Network (Ed) Blackwell Publishing; http://www.
blackwellpublishing.com/
Guy’s, St Thomas’ and Lewisham Hospitals
Hospitals
Complementary therapies
Herbal Medicines Barnes J, Anderson LA, Phillipson JD Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
pharmpress.com
Homeopathic Pharmacy: Theory and Practice Kayne SB Churchill Livingstone; http://www.
elsevierhealth.com/
Dietary Supplements Mason P Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
pharmpress.com
Contraception
Contraception: Your Questions Answered Guillebaud J Churchill Livingstone; http://www.
elsevierhealth.com/
The Pill and Other Forms of Hormonal
Contraception: The Facts
Guillebaud J Oxford University Press; http://www.oup.co.
uk/
Cytotoxics
Cytotoxics Handbook Allwood M, Stanley A, Wright P Radcliffe Medical press; http://www.radcliffe-
oxford.com/
Cancer Principles & Practice Of Oncology DeVita VT, Hellman S, Rosenberg SA Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; http://www.
lww.co.uk/
Diagnostic tests
Special Tests: The Procedure and Meaning of
Evans D Elsevier; http://www.elsevier.com
Some of the Commoner Tests in Hospital
Continued over
254
Information retrieval CHAPTER 23
Interpretation of Diagnostic Tests Wallach JB Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; http://www.
lww.co.uk/
Oxford Handbook of Clinical and Laboratory
Investigation
Dictionaries
Medical Abbreviations and Eponyms Sloane SB Elsevier; http://www.elsevier.com
Stedman’s Concise Medical Dictionary Stedman T Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; http://www.
Drug abuse
Drugs of Abuse Wills S Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
Drug administration
Provan D Oxford University Press; http://www.oup.com/
uk
lww.co.uk/
pharmpress.com
Handbook of Drug Administration via Enteral
Feeding Tubes
Administering Medicines through Enteral
Feeding Tubes
NEWT Guidelines for Administration of
Medicines to Patients with Enteral Feeding
Tubes or Swallowing Difficulties
Handbook on Injectable Drugs Trissel LA American Society of Health-System
The Syringe Driver: Continuous Subcutaneous
Infusions in Palliative Care
Drug interactions
Stockley’s Drug Interactions Baxter K Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
Drug Interactions, Analysis and Management Hansten PD, Horn JR Facts and Comparisons; http://www.
Evidence-based medicines
Clinical Evidence Young C BMJ Publishing Group; http://www.bmj.com/
Evidence Based Medicine Straus SE, Richardson WS, Glasziou P,
Legal and ethical
Dale and Applebe’s Pharmacy Law & Ethics Applebe GE, Wingfield J Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
Medicines, Ethics and Practice – A Guide for
Pharmacists
White R, Bradnam V Pharmaceutical Press; http://www.
pharmpress.com
Royal Hospitals, Belfast Royal Hospitals, Belfast
Wrexham Maelor Hospital North East Wales NHS Trust
Pharmacists; http://www.ashp.org
Dickman A, Schneider J, Varga J Oxford University Press; http://www.oup.com/
uk
pharmpress.com
factsandcomparisons.com
Churchill Livingstone; http://www.
Haynes RB
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great
Britain
elsevierhealth.com/
pharmpress.com
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain;
http://www.rpsgb.org.uk
Palliative care
A Guide to Symptom Relief in Palliative Care Regnard C, Hockley J Radcliffe Medical Press; http://www.radcliffe-
oxford.com/
Palliative Care Formulary Twycross R, Wilcock A, Charlesworth
S, Dickman A
Radcliffe Medical Press; http://www.radcliffe-
oxford.com/
Continued over
255
SECTION THREE Pharmacy prescribing and selection of medicines
Table 23.5 (Continued )
Pharmacokinetics
Basic Clinical Pharmacokinetics Winter ME Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; http://www.
lww.co.uk/
Pregnancy and lactation
Drugs in Pregnancy and Lactation Briggs GG, Freeman RK, Yaffe SJ Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; http://www.
lww.co.uk/
Medication and Mothers’ Milk Hale T Hale Publishing
Handbook of Obstetric Medicine Nelson-Piercy C Taylor & Francis Ltd; http://www.
taylorandfrancis.co.uk/
Drugs During Pregnancy and Lactation Schaefer C, Peters PWJ, Miller RK Elsevier; http://www.elsevier.com
Prescribing in Pregnancy Rubin P, Ramsay M Blackwell Publishing; http://www.
blackwellpublishing.com/
Therapeutics in Pregnancy and Lactation Lee A, Inch S, Finnigan D Radcliffe Medical Press; http://www.radcliffe-
oxford.com/
Psychiatry
Psychotropic Drug Directory Bazire S Healthcomm UK Ltd; http://healthcomm-uk.
com/
Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines Taylor D, Paton C, Kerwin R Taylor & Francis Ltd; http://www.
taylorandfrancis.co.uk/
Case Studies in Psychopharmacology Taylor D, Paton C Taylor & Francis Ltd; http://www.
taylorandfrancis.co.uk/
Renal impairment
Drug Prescribing in Renal Failure: Dosing
Guidelines for Adults
The Renal Drug Handbook Ashley C, Currie A Radcliffe Medical Press; http://www.radcliffe-
Surgery
Oxford Handbook of Clinical Surgery McLatchie G, Borley N, Chikwe J Oxford University Press; http://www.oup.com/
Wound management
Formulary of Wound Management Products Morgan D Euromed Communications; http://www.
Because the knowledge base in many areas of therapeutics is rapidly changing, the information contained
in textbooks may be too old to be useful. This problem
does not apply, however, to those textbooks available in
electronic full text as these can be more regularly
updated, usually every fewmonths. Another important
exception is the BNF, which is updated and published
as a new edition every 6 months.
Tertiary references should be the first port of call
when trying to find background information on a
Brier ME, Aronoff GR American College of Physicians; http://www.
acponline.org/
oxford.com/
uk
euromed.uk.com/
subject.With the advent of the electronic age, it is easy
to forget that information can be found quickly and
easily in the humble book. Books are easy to handle,
readable,contain concise information and are indexed.
Having said that, the reader must also be aware
that the information presented in a textbook is subject
to the opinion, evaluation and bias of the author. It is
often assumed that what is written in a textbook must
be accurate; in fact, the author(s) may not have comprehensively searched, analysed or interpreted all
256
Information retrieval CHAPTER 23
information. The information contained in textbooks
may also not be as comprehensive as the reader would
like. This may be due to factors such as restriction on
chapter length or the degree of emphasis that the
author has placed on each topic. Because they cover
topics very broadly, textbooks are often poorly referenced, indicating only the most significant papers to
support or refute a stated case. A reluctance to use
textbooks is especially evident in the newer generation of pharmacy students used to the immediacy of
information on the Internet. But especially in comparison to user-generated websites such as Wikipedia,
good textbooks are an important and reliable resource
and they should not be overlooked.
Organizing and citing
references
For academic work, it is often necessary to store a
relatively large number of retrieved citations. It is
always advisable to implement some system for keeping track of the information amassed. A number of
bibliography management systems exist for this purpose. Examples include RefWorks, EndNote
ence Manager
Ò
and ProCiteÒ. These products help
users create personal databases. They enable users to
import, organize, manage and export citations, to create reference lists and bibliographies for written academic work such as projects, reports and papers.
A number of referencing styles exist for citing retrieved information. Most academic institutions and
publications have standardized requirements. Some
of the more widely used citation styles are listed in
Box 23.7. Whatever style is used, accuracy, clarity and
consistency are the key factors when citing information sources. Guidelines for citing electronic sources
are not yet fully standardized because these sources,
which include the Internet, are constantly changing
Box 23.7
Common citation styles
*
American Medical Association (AMA) style
*
American Psychological Association (APA) style
*
Chicago: author-date style
*
Chicago: humanities style
*
Harvard style
*
Modern Language Association (MLA) style
*
Vancouver/ICMJE style
Ò
, Refer-
Box 23.8
Some general formats for references
including punctuation
Journals
Donyai P, O’Grady K, Jacklin A, Barber N, Franklin
BD. The effects of electronic prescribing on the
quality of prescribing. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2008 Feb;
65(2):230–37.
Books
Rees J, Smith I, Smith B. Introduction to
pharmaceutical calculations. 2nd ed. London:
Pharmaceutical Press; 2005. p 240
Dissertations and theses
Pannala Venkata AS. Peroxynitrite induced oxidative
modification of low density lipoprotein [dissertation].
London University of London; 1998. p 250
Papers and poster sessions presented at
meetings
Van den Berg M, Donyai P. How is the language of
medicines use review leaflets symbolizing the
service? Paper presented at: 13th Health Service
Research and Pharmacy Practice Conference; 2007
April 2–3; Keele, UK.
Journals on the Internet
Wright JR, Kowaleski B, Sussman J. What constitutes
a clinical trial: a survey of oncology professionals.
Trials [internet]. 2008 March 3 [cited 2008 March 14];9
(12). Available from http://www.trialsjournal.com/
content/9/1/12
Websites
PJOnline [Internet]. London: The Pharmaceutical
Journal; c1999–2008 [cited 2008 March 14]. Available
from: http://www.pjonline.com/
and citation formats have to adapt to these changes.
See Box 23.8 for some general reference formats.
Most biomedical journals now follow the Vancouver/ICMJE referencing style. Readers are directed
to the website of the International Committee of
Medical Journal Editors for more detailed guidance
(http://www.icmje.org/).
Avoiding plagiarism
As discussed, a citation is the formal acknowledgement of intellectual debt to previously published research. Therefore, referencing is a way of ensuring
that due credit is given to other people’s work. It is
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SECTION THREE Pharmacy prescribing and selection of medicines
sometimes easy to copy and paste from journal articles and web pages into one’s own work. While common knowledge does not need a citation or reference,
taking someone’s work and not indicating where it
came from is termed plagiarism and is regarded as
an infringement of copyright. To attempt to pass off
such work as one’s own is considered cheating. This is
not appreciated in any field of work. Plagiarism is
considered a serious matter and higher education
institutions invest in plagiarism detection software
to scan assessment material.
Information services
Pharmacists are expected to be able to provide accurate, reliable, impartial, relevant and up-to-date
information on a wide range of issues. Sometimes
pharmacists themselves need help with answering
health- and medicines-related queries. A number of
organizations exist to help. Unlike libraries which
normally provide information in an unprocessed manner, pharmacy information services can provide tailormade answers to specific enquiries using analysis and
interpretation. In the UK, the best known facility is
the Medicines Information service based in NHS
pharmacies.
Most information services will work to standardized
procedures to ensure quality in enquiry answering.
Pharmacists working in any sector of the profession
should follow similar methods. The same basic information should be collected from the enquirer, to
include : the enquiry, the name and contact details
of the enquirer, the urgency of the enquiry, the
purpose and sources already used. Ideally the full
manner in which enquiries are handled should be
documented to provide an audit trail for quality
assurance purposes. Clear and comprehensive documentation is necessary for legal and ethical reasons, in order to ascertain exactly what information
was provided, by whom and what resources were
used. Appropriate documentation also ensures that
an enquiry can be located at a later date, to save
time in dealing with future enquiries. See Box 23.9
for the type of information that needs to be documented in relation to each enquiry.
Medicines information services
The NHS Medicines Information service is provided
by a network of 250 local Medicines Information
centres based in the pharmacy departments of most
Box 23.9
Headings for documenting medicines
information enquiries
*
Full name and contact details of enquirer
*
The date and time the enquiry was received
*
Full identity of the person receiving the enquiry
*
Mutually realistic agreed timescale for provision of
answer
*
Enquirer’s preference for method of reply
*
Clear account of the enquiry describing the
question and the background information in
sufficient detail to allow a third party to tackle the
enquiry without further contact with the enquirer
*
All relevant background information for patientspecific enquiries to include patient age, sex,
weight; medication (including dose and duration of
therapy); diagnosis, relevant medical history; liver
and renal function; history of adverse drug
reactions; whether pregnant or breastfeeding
*
Annotation of enquiry at various stages with the
date and signature, e.g. annotate the search with
the date and identity of the researcher
*
The search itself in the order the resources have
been searched with clear identification of
resources
*
Evaluation of the information, consideration of
practicality of advice and detail of answer
*
Consideration of method of communication
*
Summary of answer given (including further points
discussed)
*
Completion date and/or time
*
Full name of person who handled the enquiry
*
All other relevant information
*
Descriptive title for the enquiry
*
Relevant keywords
hospital trusts as well as 14 regional centres and two
national centres (Northern Ireland and Wales). The
aim of Medicines Information is to support the safe,
effective and efficient use of medicines through
the provision of evidence-based information and advice on therapeutic use of medicines. The centres are
staffed by pharmacists and technicians with clinical
expertise, and particular skills in locating, assessing and interpreting information about medicines.
Local and regional medicines information centres provide an enquiry answering service, to patient and
healthcare professional enquirers, on all aspects
of drug therapy. Over half a million enquiries are
handled by the service each year.
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