For your final paper in Seminar 3, you will need to survey scholarly work relevant to your group’s topic. The first step is to find relevant works to include in your literature review. According to a recent overview by Revere et al. (2007), “public health literature is poorly indexed in bibliographic databases and dispersed across a wide variety of journals and other sources across many disciplines.” That means you will need to dig in a variety of different sources to make sure there aren’t any gaping holes in your survey of the literature.
Here are some resources recommended by Revere et al. (and a few additional ones) for researching public health literature.
This is not a comprehensive list of sources. When you stumble across leads not included in this overview, pursue them. Research is an iterative process.
Bibliographic databases
- BiosisPreviews
- CINAHL
- Current Contents (through Web of Knowledge)
- Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts
- Library Literature and Information Science
- National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE (through PubMed)
- PAIS International
- Web of Science (through Web of Knowledge)
Leading journals (search here)
- American Journal of Public Health
- Annual Review of Public Health
- Journal of Public Health Management & Practice
- Public Health Reports
- Journal of the American Medical Association
- New England Journal of Medicine
- British Medical Journal
- American Journal of Epidemiology
Web resources
- CDC website
- NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
- Librarian’s Internet Index
- New York Academy of Medicine’s Grey Literature (NYAM GreyLit) library
- Scout Report
- GPO Federal Digital System
- NLM Gateway
- Google Scholar (but never rely on this exclusively—it is not compiled by experts, but by blind algorithms!)
- Zanran
Compilations of research
- Annotated bibliography for syndromic surveillance (CDC)
- Evidence-based Practice for Public Health Project
- Public Health Information Needs and Information-Seeking Behavior Bibliography
- Current Bibliographies in Medicine
- Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce website
- Visit medical association websites (e.g., the American Heart Association) and see what medial research they link to and which journals they publish.
Remember that if you have difficulty gaining access to any of the databases or journals listed above through the CCNY library, you may be able to get a hold of them at another CUNY library, at branches of the New York, Brooklyn or Queens Borough Public Libraries, or through inter-library loan.
I wish you the best of success as you work to earn a well-deserved A in Seminar 3! Come see me during my office hours if you have difficulty using any of these resources.
Revere, Debra et al. (2007), Understanding the information needs of public health practitioners: A literature review to inform design of an interactive digital knowledge management system. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 40 (4): 410–421, DOI: 10.1016/j.jbi.2006.12.008.
