In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio State University produced Evidence Reviews, which synthesize and summarize high quality evidence on COVID-19 clinical questions. The OSU Evidence Reviews follow the same methodology as Level One evidence (systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and guidelines) according to Evidence Based Practice--finding all primary source original research studies relevant to the research question, aggregating and comparing the results to each other, and summarizing the findings. The process is continuous as the authors constantly watch for new research to incorporate into the Evidence Reviews.
The Subject Guides listed below may guide you to additional resources related to COVID-19 topics.
Because COVID-19 is a new disease, the usual search strategies and resources do not optimize your chances of success. The issues are discussed below.
None of us start a research project knowing everything we want to know about the topic. That is WHY we do research! But it can be very helpful to get some background information relevant to the topic.
For COVID-19, it can be helpful to review what is known about the immune system and vaccines. Reading or skimming over the chapter about the immune system in a basic biology textbook may be sufficient. Also, the relevant entries from science encyclopedias may also provide an appropriate overview.
You may also wish to read about general information on infectious diseases, coronaviruses/influenza, epidemics or pandemics, depending on your COVID-19 topic.
However, don't let your lack of knowledge now stop you from looking for information and learning more about it. As I stated, that is why we do research! If you want to just jump in, then jump in!
COVID-19 is a new disease. New things don't start out with a name and it takes time for people to agree on what to call it. Therefore, COVID-19 literature requires creativity and finesse to find, especially for the early information.
The Medical Libraries Association provides some recommended search strings for COVID-19 topics in various medical databases.
A possible search string for EBSCOhost databases is shown below. It should be combined with Subjects to be more comprehensive.
((("Corona virinae" OR "corona virus" OR Coronavirinae OR coronavirus OR COVID OR nCoV) N4 ("19" OR "2019" OR novel OR new)) OR (("Corona virinae" OR "corona virus" OR Coronavirinae OR coronavirus OR COVID OR nCoV) and (wuhan OR china OR chinese)) OR "Corona virinae19" OR "Corona virinae2019" OR "corona virus19" OR "corona virus2019" OR Coronavirinae19 OR Coronavirinae2019 OR coronavirus19 OR coronavirus2019 OR COVID19 OR COVID2019 OR nCOV19 OR nCOV2019 OR "SARS Corona virus 2" OR "SARS Coronavirus 2" OR "SARS-COV-2" OR "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona virus 2" OR "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2")
For most science or health science topics, it is recommended by health science librarians that you start your search at LitCovid.
LitCovid is a database created in 2020 that includes only a subset of publications records determined to be relevant to COVID-19 from the PubMed database. Many of the publications are full-text because publishers of journals are choosing to be gracious and allow it. Those publications where the copyright is owned by a publisher may have the full-text access rescinded at any time by the publisher.
Next, the researcher would broaden the search to other peer reviewed sources, which are usually findable via the science and health science databases.
The ISU Library provides access to many science and health science databases.
Many of the publications are full-text because publishers of journals are choosing to be gracious and allow it. Those publications where the copyright is owned by a publisher may have the free full-text access raken away at any time by the publisher.
Recommended databases are chosen because they may be standards in their field, may be larger, or may contain better quality information on average than the other database choices. This does not guarantee that they are the best choice for YOUR research topic.
CINAHL® provides indexing for 2,737 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. The database contains more than 1,000,000 records dating back to 1982. Offering complete coverage of English-language nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses' Association, CINAHL covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.
Web of Science is a collection of databases that index the world's leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, as published in journals, conference proceedings, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions across the globe.
In addition, other science and health science databases may help you discover relevant COVID-19 information.
Unpublished articles are being posted to preprint servers in order to be available to other scientists quickly.
Start with medRxiv and/or bioRxiv.
NOTICE: medRxiv and bioRxiv will cut off a search string at 128 characters. For a comprehensive search on COVID-19 to find all of the relevant literature, I suggest conducting all of the following five searches and pooling the results.
Other preprint servers also collect completed manuscripts before they have been peer-reviewed and accepted by a journal.
In addition, there are tools that allow researchers to search across multiple data sources to find publications. This is called "federated search." USe federated search with caution. It works by generalizing the search strategy to work in all of the databases, but in doing so, it loses the specialized features of each individual database.
Many science and health science journal publishers are generously making the full-text of COVID-19 related articles available for free. A simple search of the Internet may find the full-text of many COVID-19 articles.
However, those journals often do own the copyright of those articles and that free access could be taken away at the publisher's discretion. The ISU Library holds subscriptions to many science journals and can provide the full-text. Instructions for how to do this are in the "Finding Full-text Subject Guide" below. In addition, the Interlibrary Loan service of the ISU Library can acquire most publications from other libraries for ISU employees and students.
From the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Cochrane Collaboration, the COVID-NMA project maintains continuosly updated evidence synthesis on preventive interventions, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19.
