Tutorials, guides and skills
Learn essential research and academic skills and discover how best to use various medicine and biomedicine resources with our guides and video and e-learning tutorials
Book an online appointment now
Book a one to one support appointment with a medicine librarian to discuss your project or research.
If you are doing a Systematic Review, please read the support guidance below before booking a consultation.
NHS library members please contact your NHS support librarian.
Your librarians
Your librarians are here to support your learning, teaching and research and meet with individuals, teams or departments to provide tailored training.
They can help with:
- Using the Library and our services
- Searching and finding information
- Evaluating the information you find
- Using and connecting to e-journals, e-books and databases
- Search strategies for literature reviews and systematic reviews
- Referencing and reference management software
- Open access publishing
Systematic Reviews Support
The Cochrane Handbook recommends that ‘Review authors should work closely, from the start of the protocol, with an experienced medical/healthcare librarian or information specialist’ (1). Due to the amount of time required to provide these services, and the need to respect course requirements, levels of service for academic staff and students are outlined below and apply for other types of knowledge syntheses such as scoping reviews, rapid reviews and umbrella reviews.
Accordion Widget - Systematic Review
Students
Outline of librarian involvement in the process
There are many steps to the process of conducting a systematic review; more information about the process can be found on Literature searching and systematic reviews pages.
The time required to complete a systematic review varies widely. Student projects will have limited time to complete the research, which should be considered when formulating the research question and deciding on the scope/scale of the topic.
For doctoral students, master’s students, and undergraduate students, where the review project is part of your dissertation, thesis or coursework, librarians are available for consultation on the following aspects of systematic reviews; additional help may be available on a case-by-case basis:
- Formulating a suitable research question
- Providing resources to answer other questions about the review process
- Checking for published or in-process reviews on the same topic
- Designing and building the search strategy (including MeSH, Filters etc.)
- Searching grey literature (the librarian may be able to suggest suitable sources and provide guidance on how to search these sources, as well as advice on citation searches, hand searching, or contacting key individuals/organizations/companies in a subject area)
- Reviewing keywords, syntax, MeSH/Subject Headings, wildcards etc.
- Advising on reference management, screening and deduplication of search results
Five steps to systematic review / project support:
- Start: Research Methods (VLE)
- Explore: Subject Support – Medicine & Medical Biosciences (e.g. systematic review flowchart, literature searching tutorial)
- Engage: MS Teams – Community of Practice
- Questions: Email – lib-med-liaison@imperial.ac.uk
- Consult: Online Consultation * – Book a 1:1 appointment
*Once the literature is scoped and you have begun your searches, you may need more in-depth advice relating to your specific search strategy and question, this is the time to book a 1:1 consultation with a Medical Liaison Librarian.
Consultation
Before the first meeting with the librarian, students will be expected to have consulted the Library’s Literature searching tutorial.
If available, a draft review protocol with the following information, should also be provided:
- Background justification for the review
- Draft research question
- Draft inclusion and exclusion criteria
Information about the review process, including links to many external sources of advice and support, can be found in Systematic review guide and flowchart.
Researchers and Academic Staff
Using this service
If you require a consultation, please book an online appointment.
Outline of librarian involvement in the process
There are many steps to the process of conducting a systematic review; more information about the process can be found on Literature searching and systematic reviews pages.
Researchers are also encouraged to visit the Systematic Reviews Community of Practice, where questions, answers, experiences and best practice can be posted among fellow peers engaged in the review process.
Librarians may be available for consultation on the following aspects of systematic reviews; additional help may be available on a case-by-case basis:
- Formulating a suitable research question
- Providing resources to answer other questions about the review process
- Checking for published or in-process reviews on the same topic
- Designing and building the search strategy (including MeSH, Filters etc.)
- Searching grey literature (the librarian may be able to advise on searching suitable sources, citation searches, hand searching, etc.)
- Reviewing keywords, syntax, MeSH/Subject Headings, wildcards etc.
- Advising on reference management and deduplication of search results
- Advising on screening of results and the PRISMA flow
- Signposting for information on publishing, Open Access etc.
Consultation
Before the first meeting with the librarian, staff will be expected to have consulted the Library’s Literature searching tutorial.
If available, a draft review protocol with the following information, should also be provided:
- Background justification for the review
- Draft research question
- Draft inclusion and exclusion criteria
Information about the review process, including links to many external sources of advice and support, can be found in Systematic review guide and flowchart.
Follow up
Librarian can provide ad hoc feedback on the strategy and advise on; issues with search terms, syntax, and structure; translation of the search strategy to other databases; citation management (e.g., exporting and deduplication of search results)
Nb. EndNote is the default software recommended for Systematic Reviews
Librarians can also advise on the use of Covidence, systematic review management software for screening and review of search results.
Updating systematic reviews
As a systematic review may take many months, it is likely that any searches conducted will need to be rerun in order to capture relevant articles published in the intervening period. The librarian can advise on this process as necessary.
If you wish to increase your skills in planning and managing systematic / research reviews and the advanced search methodologies needed for this type of research - see Literature searching and systematic reviews.
Book a Library or Graduate School workshop
The Library and Graduate School run training programmes with workshops on digitial and information skills, academic skills, writing, presenting, referencing and using LaTeX.
Literature searching skills
Literature searching tutorial
This interactive, online tutorial was designed for undergraduates, but will be suitable for anyone who needs an introduction or refresher on searching to support assignments and literature reviews in medicine and biomedicine.
- The tutorial sections guide you through the process of doing a literature review; from creating your research question and search strategy, to searching a variety of databases, to exporting and managing the results you find
- Once you are in the tutorial you can work your way through it sequentially or use the menu on the left of the screen to go directly to the lesson that you need
Searching for Reviews
Searching for Reviews tutorial
This interactive, online tutorial was designed for those conducting Systematic and Scoping Reviews.
The tutorial sections guide you through the process of creating a focused research question, developing inclusion criteria, running an effective search strategy, finding grey literature, as well as exporting and managing the results.
Once you are in the tutorial you can work your way through it sequentially or use the menu on the left of the screen to go directly to the section that you need.
If you would like to use any individual sections of this tutorial for teaching purposes please contact lib-med-liaison@imperial.ac.uk
Guides and tutorials for individual databases
A beginner's guide to Ovid MEDLINE (pdf)
This guide explains the basics of searching in Ovid MEDLINE and is ideal for novice searchers or those not familiar with MEDLINE or searching databases using the Ovid interface.
The Ovid MEDLINE tutorial below acts as a good companion to this guide, with demonstrations of searching in Ovid and more detail on advanced search techniques.
This tutorial guides you through how best to search and find full text in Ovid MEDLINE
- You'll learn how to search using both keywords and subject headings, combine your search lines using Boolean commands like AND / OR and how to use more advanced search functions like truncation and wildcards, as well as how to find full text
- There is also some material that will help you search in a more systematic and structured way - for example creating an answerable, focused search question
CINAHL is our one subscription health database that doesn’t use the Ovid platform. This guide covers beginner and advanced search functions in CINAHL and explains how to manage and export results. Other than the information about subject headings all these instructions are the same for other Ebsco databases such as Business Source Ultimate and British Education Index.
Introduction to Scopus (pdf)
This guide covers beginner and advanced search functions in Scopus and explains how to manage and export results. It also covers some of Scopus’ more specialised features beyond article searching - such as searching both forward and backward from a particular citation and author profiles which cover affiliations, number of publications and bibliographic data, references, and details on the number of citations each published document has received. You’ll discover how to set up alerts to track changes to a profile.
Critical appraisal skills and statistics
Checklists, calculators and other appraisal tools are available on the Medicine, medical biosciences and healthcare resources page.
e-learning
Statistics and Experimental Design e-learning (College resource)
This interactive short course for medicine and biomedicine has been produced by the Faculty of Medicine Postgraduate Education Team. Course content includes an introduction to statistics, descriptive statistics, 95% confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, correlation, simple and multiple linear regression, measures of risk and logistic regression, statistical power and sample size. You will also be able to open the SPSS program and explore a dataset.
College staff and students may self-enrol via Blackboard using the link above. When you first click on the link you will see an error message in the main screeen but click 'enrol' in the left hand column and you should be able to access the course.
For enquiries about this course or any problems with access or content contact the course creators.
Critically Appraising the Evidence Base e-learning
This freely available programme was developed by the NHS Knowledge for Healthcare Learning Academy in partnership with recognised subject matter experts. It covers the different methods and tools to carry out critical appraisal of research, through 8 modules, each taking around 30 minutes to complete. By the end of the programme, learners will be able to:
- describe the following terms; critical appraisal, bias, internal validity and external validity
- distinguish between different types of study designs and their strengths and limitations
- assess the appropriateness of methods used to conduct a randomised controlled trial, systematic review, diagnostic study and qualitative study
- interpret commonly reported results found in clinical papers
- identify different types of critical appraisal tools and their strengths and limitations
Sessions may be completed in any order, though to get the most out of the programme, we suggest completing the sessions in the order listed above.
While the programme is freely available, you can login with your NHS OpenAthens account to record progress. The programme is also available to NHS healthcare staff via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Accessing this e-learning via ESR means that your completions will transfer with you throughout your NHS career.
Websites
Understanding Health Research (freely available)
This website will guide you through a series of simple questions to help you to easily review and interpret a published health research paper.
Referencing and reference management software
Find information about why and how to reference correctly on the Library’s referencing support pages. There are guides for both Vancouver and Harvard style as well as guidance on accessing and using reference management software such as EndNote, RefWorks, Mendeley and Zotero.
Plagiarism awareness and academic integrity
Faculty of Medicine students receive training in understanding and avoiding plagiarism in face to face and online teaching as part of their courses, but there is further guidance and support available for students and staff who may want to refresh their knowledge.
- The support for undergraduates has explanations and examples of all types of plagiarism, as well as a quiz to check your understanding
- Plagiarism awareness support tailored for Masters and PhD students and for staff is also available
(1) Lefebvre C, Glanville J, Briscoe S, Featherstone R, Littlewood A, Marshall C, Metzendorf M-I, Noel-Storr A, Paynter R, Rader T, Thomas J, Wieland LS. Chapter 4: Searching for and selecting studies. In: Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.3 (updated February 2022). Cochrane, 2022. Available from www.training.cochrane.org/handbook.