Please consider completing the worksheet below to facilitate finding information. Scholarly databases do not work like Google and look for your exact keywords - that's a reason why the worksheet below is so important!

Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary

• Primary Literature = Original research/reports published in the biomedical journals (e.g., randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, case reports, meta-analyses, animal studies, etc.)

• Secondary Literature = Indexing and Abstracting Services (e.g., PubMed, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts)

• Tertiary Literature = Summary of the available literature (books, drug compendia, review articles [e.g., Facts and Comparisons, Stat!Ref, Pharmacotherapy: A pathophysiologic approach, etc.])

Primary sources for health and medicine tend to be original research articles, such as clinical studies and randomized controlled trials. When reading a primary source, the methodology, research, and results suggest that the author(s) were actively involved in working with patients or other test subjects/materials to analyze and report the outcomes.

There are numerous ways to retrieve evidence-based resources from PubMed.  Below are instructions to help you narrow down to primary research. Note: With this filter applied, you still need to look at the article's abstract to determine if it is indeed primary research.

Clinical Queries, Clinical Study Categories

1. Get to PubMed from one of the library's links
2. Scroll below the PubMed search box so you're at the menu that says: Learn, Find, Download, Explore 
3. Under the Find menu, select Clinical Queries 
4. Run your search in Clinical Queries, and when results display, select See All under the initial list of results under Clinical Study Categories.
   You can likely leave Clinical Queries on its default setting for Therapy/Broad - (this means you're looking for research on treatment).  You can also change it to Therapy/Narrow to increase your specificity, if getting too many results. 
   

Below are 2 examples of primary research articles that have key indicators that the article's authors performed the research (primary research). Abstracts may have very clear headings indicative of primary research, as in Example 2, or you may have to read the abstract more closely, such as in Example 1. Key indicators of primary research are abstract headings or content such as the following: Aims/Objectives, Methods/Methodology, Results, Conclusion:

Example 1: You must read the article abstract to find out that indicators of primary research are there

Example 2: Headings with Indicators of Primary Research

You may want information from drugs' clinical trials, yet find this information challenging to find.  Please read the article linked below to get some clarify on why finding this information may be challenging.

If your drug does happen to be created by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), then please take a look at the GSK Clinical Study Register database mentioned in the linked article, and linked below.