Course Literature search in medical databases (Language English)

The course Literature search in medical databases (PhD) is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2025.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students).

Please notice the equivalent course for research year medical students: A88 (Research-year) Systematic Literature Search.

Requirements for participation: Master’s degree

Aim: To make the participants familiar with the most important medical databases, and enable them to perform qualified searches for relevant scholarly literature. Furthermore, to make the participants aware of basic principles of research evaluation and different aspects related to research publication.  

Learning outcomes: 

• To enable the participants to perform qualified searches, systematic as well as citation searches, in relevant medical databases.
• To introduce the participants to methods of scientific quality measurements, thus enabling them to understand the basic principles of research evaluation.
• To present a brief overview of different aspects related to research publication such as Copyright, Open Access, and Predatory Journals.
• To introduce the basic concept of reference management programs in general and – if requested – to make the participants familiar with the specific reference management program EndNote.

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 7 hours

Content: Structure and content of the databases will be reviewed. With respect to literature searching, emphasis will be on PubMed, and the participants will learn to construct precise search strings by employing the tools (e.g. MeSH) of the databases. The focal point of the introduction to Web of Science and Scopus will be cited reference searches. In continuation of this, issues of “What is scientific quality, and can it be measured?” (‘impact factor’, H-index, research registration, etc.) will be discussed. Furthermore, topics related to the publication of research results will be presented and discussed (Responsible conduct of research, Copyright, Open Access, and Predatory Journals). Finally, reference management programs (EndNote) will be introduced.

The lessons will alternate between theory and exercises at the computer.

Instructors: Janne Lytoft Simonsen, MSc, PhD, and Annette Balle Sørensen, MSc, PhD, AU Library, Health Sciences, Aarhus University

Venue: Aarhus University, Aarhus (other)

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 07 October 2025 09:00 - 16:00