Article - A narrative writeup of a research project, typically included a description of how the research was conducted, the results of the research, and what conclusions can be drawn from it.
Conference Proceeding - A written and published record of research presented at an academic conference. Typically includes abstracts or research reports.
Critical appraisal - The process of evaluating a research article for its trustworthiness, value, and relevance in a particular context.
EBP - The practice of combining the best available research evidence with your own clinical expertise and the patient's values in the clinical environment.
Evidence synthesis - An umbrella term for advanced review articles that synthesize the available evidence such as systematic reviews and scoping reviews.
Grey literature - Research (or research-adjacent) literature that falls outside the scope of the traditional, peer-reviewed journal article. Includes many different types of literature such as preprints, clinical trial registries, and government reports.
Iterative searching - The process of evaluating your search strategy and search results to continuously revise your search strategy to get better results for your research project.
Library catalog - A tool/search engine for finding resources provided by the library, including books, journal articles, and more.
Literature Review - Also called a Narrative Review. Literature reviews undertake an extensive description and interpretation of previously published literature.
Meta-analysis - A systematic review that uses advanced statistical techniques to combine the results of many individual studies to create meaningful insights.
Pre-print - A research article that is published freely online before being peer-reviewed or formally published in an academic journal.
Research database - A database, typically consisting of research literature, designed to be used for academic research purposes. Research databases typically have a defined scope, some form of quality assurance criteria, and allow for advanced searching techniques.
Review articles - An umbrella term of articles that synthesize existing research literature, including narrative reviews, systematic reviews, and other forms of evidence synthesis.
Scoping Review - A type of review article that uses a systematic, rigorous, and reproducible methodology to analyze the current state of the research literature on a given topic. Scoping reviews often have a wider scope than systematic reviews or address non-clinical questions. Learn more in our Systematic and Scoping Reviews guide.
Search concept - A concept derived from the research question that is used to find research literature. A search concept often includes many search terms or phrases.
Search strategy - The overall strategy used in a research database to find articles on your topic. A search strategy will include clear search concepts, relevant search terms or phrases, and the use of advanced searching techniques.
Search term or phrase - An individual term or phrase used in a search strategy to find relevant articles.
Strategic or systematic searching - Approaching literature searching in a systematic way, often associated with systematic reviews. Systematic searches should be comprehensive, using many search terms and including the use of controlled vocabularies.
Study Design - The overall strategy, including research methods and analytical techniques, used to answer a research question.
Systematic Review - A type of review article that uses a systematic, rigorous, and reproducible methodology to identify all available literature on a topic, and synthesizes it to answer a clinical question and inform clinical practice. Learn more in our Systematic and Scoping Reviews guide.