Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. I am an eager graduate student who has hopes of transitioning from her current role in the healthcare field into one of medical research with a focus in my areas of biological interest such as cellular mechanisms and pathways, and immunological function. Part of this growth means that I will need to explore different means to improve how my research information will be stored. I will also need to improve my discernment skills when it comes to properly differentiating levels of quality with the information that I find online to support my research, because as we are all well aware, we have been blessed with unlimited information via the internet, however not sources provide truth in its entirety for different reasons.
During my undergrad degree I have always preferred textbooks in the past as my gold standard for informational reference. The reason being is that textbooks are written with more than one author, so collaboration of ideas upon collectively gathered data could be considered parallel almost to a peer review of a scientific journal article. You have at least a few authors who are seasoned with not only significant educational scaffolding in the topic of interest, but usually years of accompanying research in the topic as well. These authors consult with each other as well as other networks they have developed of whom have or are currently still actively researching in areas of the information that the authors are writing about. Plus textbooks provide a summarized version of a main topic versus utilizing many different journal articles of which albeit provide very valuable specific information, can be time-consuming to read through in their entirety. Our world is fast-paced and as a student, time is of the essence when being faced with constant deadlines. And to be fair, just reading an abstract of a journal article may give you the gist of topic of interest, it might not provide enough context in terms of how the conclusions had been made and therefore again, would require that the reader read the full article to have the best context for understanding (again, can be time-consuming depending on the article). However, there is valuable information online and one should keep an open mind to this; it might mean adaptation with a new approach of discernment.
Because of being in the age of virtual information sharing with online platforms which can be built by anyone who knows how, we unfortunately run the risk of discovering potential inaccuracies from such information, as there may be no requirement for validation of such platforms. Also, there may not be any references required for such information in terms of where the information was sourced from. Consequently, objective and analytical thinking needs to be "turned on" whenever searching for factual evidence-based medical information. Some questions to ask are: are there any credible sources listed within the article such as national research organizational repository websites and if so, are the journal articles peer reviewed?
To answer this question in terms of information integrity a potential researcher can ask themselves when reviewing such journal articles that are not peer reviewed are: is the experiment properly designed to warrant results that could be deemed credible? What are its limitations, and what are its highlights, and are either emphasized with a bias? Was the conclusion accurate in its reflection of the gathered results? Are the results statistically significant to warrant the abstract? What kind of reliability measures or validity measures were used? Can I replicate the same statistical results if I were to utilize their gathered data? Can I consult with relevant medical personal through my network for their feedback on an article of interest to reflect upon the likelihood of the results?
One such journal repository site that I have found to be quite reliable for the above is:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ This website provides access to reliable biomedical and genomic information to medical practitioners as well as other researchers. Some other research platform sites that I have found to be reliable for the reasons I've listed above are the following:
In terms of storing information after being found and deemed credible, one needs a means for storage. And as we know, nowadays there seems to be an application for everything, there are some programs for researchers to use that will assist with their information curation and organization such as EndNote and Mendeley Reference Manager. I have started to use Mendeley and I have personally found that it is an amazing tool that can be used to curate and organize such online informational sources. You can organize it to your preferences.
I hope this have proven helpful for any new graduate studies students as myself that are currently transitioning into becoming a research and providing a foundation for their unique data needs.
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