Electronic Selective - "Evaluation of Veterinary Literature"

How Can You Select What Is Important and Valid in the Literature?

It is important to learn to develop critical appraisal skills to quickly determine if the literature you are facing is valid and useful to you according to Ward. A quick method for evaluating a list of articles from a literature search, or a list of references from another article can be developed.

What Is Critical Appraisal?
Critical Appraisal can be defined as reading journal articles with an efficiency that allows comprehension and evaluation of the relevancy and adequacy of the information contained as applied to a given situation. It can also be expanded to the evaluation of the usefulness of journal subscriptions.

Developing critical appraisal skills is easy by following some basic methods of evaluation of literature search results first, and later, a method for evaluating individual articles.

Evaluating Literature Searches - Some Considerations
You have done extensive searching on a topic and now have a list of citations from which to choose. What methods can you use, short of reading each article, to determine which ones you want to use in your research paper?

There are several considerations, some obvious and some a little more subtle. The following is a list of some of the evaluation methods you may want to use.

• Language
  Many of the resources you may find on a comprehensive electronic database will be written in a foreign language and there may or may not be an abstract in English. If you plan on citing the article, you should read it completely first. If you are unable to read the particular foreign language, this criteria will rules out non-English articles.

• Scope
  Which of the many disciplines that overlap with veterinary medicine is the focus of the article? There are many related fields, all with their own literature. For example, is a research article in a nutrition science journal which happens to use pigs in the research going to be as valuable to you as an article from a animal nutrition journal?

• Clinical Nature
  Is the article about a research project, or is it a clinical application. Depending on your need, you would choose the appropriate one.

• Primary Literature
  This term means more than just journal versus textbook. It also refers to whether the article is an original report of research, or a rehash of old knowledge. Sometimes it is better to read the original report, and draw your own conclusions.

• Peer Reviewed Journals
  A peer reviewed journal is one that has a system in place for evaluating the articles submitted for publication. Experts who are not part of the editorial board are selected and each article is reviewed and criticized by the experts. Journals that are peer reviewed are considered "better" on the assumption that the review results in a better quality article being printed. You might also consider who is on the board, are they well know in the field with plenty of publications, books, research etc.

• Indexing
  Which of the indexing services includes this journal? Indexing services select which journals they cover based on the quality of the material published in it. A journal that is not indexed at all is probably of questionable quality. Journals that are frequently indexed, especially by CABBI, Medline, Agricola,are going to be more useful to you.You can find this information in a reference book called Ulrichs, or ask the Reference Librarian.

• Critical Appraisal of Journal Articles
  The next step in evaluating the available literature on a topic is evaluating the actual journal article itself. You must be able to quickly evaluate articles for their value to you.

• Critical Appraisal of Journal Articles
  A five step procedure has been developed and documented by R.B.Haynes, and should be helpful to you.