We know what we want to do - how do we do it?
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is about finding evidence and using that evidence to make clinical decisions. A cornerstone of EBM is the hierarchical system of classifying evidence.
Systematic reviews are a type of literature review that uses systematic methods to collect secondary data, critically appraise research studies, and synthesize findings qualitatively or quantitatively. They are designed to provide a complete, exhaustive summary of current evidence relevant to a research question.
What is a systematic review?
The University of South Australia has developed an extensive library guide to assist those wishing to undertake a systematic review:
TheCochrane Libraryis a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about Cochrane groups.
Get your hands on a wealth of videos, webinars, guides, and promotional material that can be printed out on demand for your library users. Please note that a one-time registration is needed.
Cochrane podcasts deliver the latest Cochrane evidence in an easy to access audio format, allowing you to stay up to date on newly published reviews wherever you are.
Cochrane Interactive Learning is an online course provides over 10 hours of self-directed learning on the complete systematic review process for both new and experienced review authors.
The CREBP Systematic Review Accelerator (SR Accelerator) is a purpose built to speed up multiple steps in the Systematic Review (SR) process. It is freely available for anyone in the world to use. Current tools are being continually reviewed and refined with additional tools being developed.
The IEBH SR-Accelerator is a suite of tools to speed up steps in the Systematic Review (SR) process. It is freely available for anyone in the world to use. The SRA is a modular design which means the tools can be incorporated into existing SR workflows and combined with other automation tools.
PRISMA is an evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
There are a number of AI search tools available which can be utilised as part of a literature search/systematic review.
OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records that represent open access resources. This catalog was built through harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Today, OAIster includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors.
CoCites uses scientific articles to find related articles. These scientific articles can be articles that you already know or that you found through simple best-guess keyword searches.
The CoCites browser plugin is free for Chrome browsers. It adds the CoCites logo for each scientific article in PubMed.
Grey literature is research that has not been published commercially and is therefore not necessarily searchable via the standard databases and search engines. Much grey literature is of high quality and can be an excellent source of up-to-date research in certain subject areas.
Elsevier DataSearch is a search engine that allows scientists and researchers to search for many different data types and formats across a variety of sources. The second Beta has been released with a plethora of exciting new features.
You can access Elsevier DataSearch here.
A number of resources are available to help you evaluate the quality of the information you have found.
Access How to Evaluate Information (Massey University)- includes information on the NZ-based Rauru Whakarare Evaluation Framework.
Access JBI Checklist for Text and Opinion
Quality Checklists for Podcasts
The CRAAP Test (Benedictine University)
AACODS checklist for grey literature (Flinders Academic Commons Archive)
The Guideline for Good Clinical Practice is an internationally accepted standard for the designing, conducting, recording and reporting of clinical trials.
The Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) and the Melbourne Academic Centre for Health (MACH), with support from the Melbourne Children’s Trials Centre, have partnered on a project to deliver a new suite of resources for researchers conducting investigator-initiated trials (IITs).
This first release of the toolkit includes resources for risk management, monitoring and data management. Additional resources will be added to the toolkit in the coming months. Resources are exemplar standard operating procedures, guidelines and templates already available amongst the MACH and VCCC organisations chosen by working groups comprised of individuals from the MACH and VCCC partner organisations.
The aim is for the toolkit to serve as a launching pad for researchers working in investigator-initiated trials, giving them the tools and information they need to perform their role in accordance with regulatory requirements and best practice. It is also a useful resource for institutions, providing examples of standard operating procedures and guidelines that an institution should have in place to support its researchers.
The toolkit can be accessed here.
For more information or to provide feedback, contact Dr Kate Scarff.
Surveys provide evidence on practice, attitudes, and knowledge. However, conducting good survey research is harder than it looks. The authors aim to provide guidance to both researchers and readers in conducting and interpreting survey research.
By reading this article, you should be able to: explain when to use thematic analysis, describe the steps in thematic analysis of interview data, and critique the quality of a study that uses the method of thematic analysis.
The FAIR Data Principles are a set of guiding principles in order to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.
FAIRsharing is a curated, informative and educational resource on data and metadata standards, inter-related to databases and data policies.
The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is an initiative that enables Australian research community and industry access to nationally significant, leading edge data intensive eInfrastructure, platforms, skills and collections of high-quality data.
The ResearchHub connects you with people, resources, and services from across the University to enhance and accelerate your research.
The Australian Reproducibility Network (AUS-RN) is a peer-led consortium that aims to ensure Australia retains its place as a centre for world-leading research, in particular by making research more reproducible.
The Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA) is a free online professional development program for librarians, information professionals, or other professionals who work in a data-intensive environment throughout the world.
A basic understanding of the fundamentals of data types and the application of descriptive statistics
Special series: Methods and Statistics Tutorials (Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods)
This series provides easily accessible advice to the evidence synthesis community on the common methodological and statistical issues that occur frequently within Cochrane.
Confidence intervals and statistical significance.
National Mutual Acceptance (NMA) is a national system for mutual acceptance of scientific and ethical review for multi-centre clinical trials conducted in publicly funded health services.
Each Australian state has an ethical review process and information is available from the State and Territory website links below:
Researchers are now required to submit all New Research Applications and Post Approval Applications via the Ethics Review Manager (ERM) website - excluding Audit and Quality Improvement Applications and Clinical Database and Database Application Submissions.
This short course aims to provide the researcher with the basic principles of GCP and how these principles can be applied practically in the research setting. The course is aimed at all those involved in clinical research.
The college acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises their unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, waters and seas and their rich contribution to society. We pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging.
The college acknowledges and respects Māori as the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa and is committed to upholding the principles of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, fostering the college’s relationship with Māori, supporting Māori fellows and trainees, and striving to improve the health of Māori.
The college recognises the special relationship between the Pacific peoples of New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific, and is committed to supporting those fellows and trainees of ANZCA, and improving the health of Pacific peoples.