The Library Service can provide practical support for those planning, conducting or considering clinical research.
Managing your Research Project
During your project, library staff can:
- Keep you up to date with developments in your area of expertise by providing regular updates of recently published research
- Help organise your references using a reference manager, making them easy to access and organise for inclusion in publications
- Provide a quiet place to study with internet access
- Support with critical appraisal
- Create tailored current awareness alerts for your research topic
- Help with OpenAthens registration
Once you’ve completed your project, please let us know if you publish your findings in a journal, or present it at a conference, so that we can help promote it and add it to the Trust publication database.
For support and information contact Andrew Hough, Outreach Librarian
Trust’s Research and Innovation Department
The Research & Innovation Department can support your research at every stage, from helping to turn your ideas into researchable questions, advice on grants, preparing your application, to maximising the impacts of completed studies.
Contact the Trust’s Research and Innovation Department or visit their website for more information.
Books
Journals
Document Supply Service
The Library has a range of books related to research, writing for publication, statistics and critical appraisal. Go to our Research booklet for books we currently hold in the Trust libraries.
Our library catalogue is available online for a wider search of research resources.
If you have any suggestions for books, please email St Michael’s Library.
We provide access to thousands of journals. These include the NHS Core Content and our Trust subscriptions.
To find out how to access all e-journals go to our e-journals webpage or contact your nearest Trust library for help.
To access the e-journals you will need an OpenAthens password and username.
You can register online for an Athens account, or ask library staff to set one up for you.
If a journal article or book is not in stock, we can request it for you from another library.
Please complete a request form or email your nearest Trust library with full details of the article you wish to request.
Literature Evidence Search
The Library Service can carry out a detailed search for you, to identify available literature.
Please complete the online form or speak to library staff.
We can also help in the following ways:
- Planning your research proposal and initial scoping
- consultation on which databases to search
- Teaching how to plan and carry out a literature review.
Training
To enhance and develop your resource searching skills we offer training sessions including:
- NICE Evidence
- Literature Searching
- An Introduction to Critical Appraisal.
Visit our Training webpage for more information or email Andrew Hough, our Outreach Librarian, to arrange a brief training session.
Is my study research?
The following resources may help you decide whether your project is a research project:
Health Research Authority. (2017). Defining research table: A grid table outlining the key features of research, service evaluation, audit, and usual practice.
Medical Research Council, & NHS Health Research Authority. (2020). Is my study research?: This decision making tool presents a series of yes and no questions to help you decide whether or not your study is research.
Other Useful Resources
Campbell Library Systematic Reviews
Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (DARE)
Open Grey (Grey Literature in Europe)
OTseeker (Occupational Therapy Systematic Evaluation of Evidence)
Pedro (Physiotherapy Evidence Database)
