RESEARCH RESOURCES

A compilation of frequently used and/or important information along your research journey

Photo: Lochlainn Riordan, Wineglass Bay, Tasmania, Australia

Events

Research related events and calendar

Clinical Quality Registries

An overview of the type of reviews that exist in research

Databases

A collection of readily available databases relevent to Australia and/or Emergency Medicine

Clinical Trials

Clinical Trials Resources

Digital Health

Digital Health Solutions

Literature Search

Once you've established you're question, the first thing to do is understand is if its been asked and answered, and if it has, has it been answered adequately and will you be able to improve on it? To do this, you need to do your homework and goes through a few phases:

1. Reference Manager

You're going to want to get a reference manager to store all the publications that you can find relating to the subject matter to make it (a) easier to find later (b) easier to reference when you write your manuscript.

Resources

The following are some reference managers (in no particular order):

Endnote most universities (including UTAS) have a sub, otherwise try one of the others
Readcube (subscription) more user friendly than endnote, but most universities dont have a sub
Zotero
Mendeley

2. Literature Review

This is where you do key term searches using your favourite databases. It's usually not methodical, but doesn't have to be.

You'll get an idea if your question has been answered before and to what extent

Resources

The following are free search engines to help you do a quick search of the current evidence (in order of my preference):

Check with your university for any paid engines that you may have access to via an enterprise subscription.

3. Structured Review

Once you determine that the question still needs to be persued, its time to be methodical to ensure that a) you haven't missed anything important and b) you can analyse the reviews that you did find in order to determine common themes and gaps that will inform how you answer your question.

Here's a description of the common types of structured reviews done for research.

Once you decide on which type of review you want to do there are a few steps:

Create a study protocol - PRISMA is the reporting structure that you need to use. Consider publishing it!
Register your protocol. Why register? The idea of prospective registration is to reduce bias and increase transparency (not changing protocols on the fly!)

Who should you register with?

1. - PROSPERO is the most popular, only for reviews that involve an intervention and is free
  - Inplasy has a small fee, has a 48 hour turnaround and generates a DOI
  - Open Science Framework is free and has preregistration
  - Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews

Perform your review - there's a few software systems that can help (check with your university or health service for their preferred system). Here's some of my favourites:

Covidence (paid)

JBI Sumari

Write up your review - don't forget to use the PRISMA structure and checklist from step 1!
Choose a journal to publish in

Literature Search

Once you're happy that your question hasnt been answered, or answered in the right context (location, patient, time eg really old!) then its time to strap on the boots and start answering your question ie your research project.

The research project starts with the study protocol - the source of truth for everything that youre about to embark on from research team, study question(s), methods etc.

Most universities and ethics committees will have templates for study protocols.

In terms of clinical trials, the SPIRIT statement provides internationally endorsed evidence based guidance on the minimum content required (via a checklist) as well as some other fancy resources. So check it out.

Data Analysis

Once you've collected the data, you need to start analysing it! Hoepfully your analysis plan as part of your study protocol means this is not news to you!

Heres a few tools for data analysis:

1. Quantitative Data Analysis

1. - SPSS UTAS has a subscription, otherwise you'll have to pay
  - JASP (free) and offers a range of analyses and a good range of instructional guides and videos
  - Jamovi (free) uses an "R" backend with cloud & desktop options and a few instructional guides and videos, also has some handy community-built modules
  - R (free) the O.G. interface is command line, guides here
  - Confidence interval calculator (free) as described

2. Qualitative Data Analysis

1. - NVivo UTAS has a subscription, otherwise you'll have to pay
  - Taguette (free) cloud and desktop options, user guide here
  - CATMA (free) stands for computer assisted text markup and analysis, guide here
  - RQDA (free) built on R, hasn't been updated since 2020/COVID
  - QDS Miner Lite (free) less features than the paid QDA Miner

Manuscript

So you've crunched the numbers and and found some interesting things. Its time to write it up!

1. Choose a Journal

It may sound backwards, but choosing a journal where you would like to publish is important because each journal has specific requirements (eg word count, format, article types etc). So use the following tools to work out which journal(s) would be suitable for your manuscript and then be guided by their 'author guide'. Another rule of thumb, is that journals that feature heavily in your references are a good place to start as well.

Resources

JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator) - paste your abstract for a list of journal suggestions
JOT (Journal Targeter) - title, abstract and reference list inspired journal suggestions

2. Format/Writing

The EQUATOR network has reporting guidelines that should be followed. They offer the structure in which your manuscript should be layed out.

The EQUATOR Network (reporting guidelines)

CONSORT (randomised studies)
STROBE (observational studies)
CARE (case reports)
SAMPL (statistical reporting)
PRISMA (systematic reviews)

Help with writing resources

Academic Phrasebank

3. Results Section

Data Visualisation Tools

DVTs help convey the data outside of traditional graphs. Here's a few handy ones to look at:

UpSet (free)
Tableau (free)

4. Discussion

How to write a "Discussion"

Abstracts

Sometimes before you submit your full paper, you might want to submit a conference abstract to test the waters, or perhaps report on one aspect of your overall research.

Here are some resources: