| Objective: |
obtain mastery of an area of biomedical informatics literature |
| Prerequisites: |
permission of instructor |
| Deliverable: |
1) bibliography of the chosen area, annotated with information about each citation as to type of paper (review, methodology, evaluation, etc), type of biomedical application, informatics methods used, etc., OR 2) a publishable paper that reviews the literature in the chosen area.
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| Meetings: |
minimum of one hour per week. Student presents search strategy, citation coding form, or analysis of several papers. Instructor provides feedback and direction.
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| Class size: |
individual student or small group
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| Course outline: |
| 1. |
The student develops a "search strategy" to define the scope of the review.
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This involves choosing the bibliographic databases to be searched, such as Medline, various computer science databases, etc. For each database, the student must determine what keywords and boolean logic will be used. The searches must be refined until an appropriate number of papers is found (it is not possible to review hundreds of papers.) All search strategies and results should be saved in electronic form for later analysis.
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| 2. |
Design coding form (no more than 2 weeks)
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The student develops a “coding form”, which will help in grouping and classifying the papers. Items for coding include authors, title, matching keywords, type of paper (review, methodology, evaluation, etc), type of biomedical application, informatics methods used, etc., short description of content, etc. Many coding items will be specific to the purpose of the literature review.
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| 3. |
Code citations (about 7 weeks)
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The student reads the papers retrieved by the search strategy and codes them using the form. Each week the student presents findings from this process, discusses one or more specific papers. The discussion may result in refinements to the search strategy or coding form.
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| 4. |
Prepare annotated bibliography or review paper (no more than 2 weeks)
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When the coding is completed the student should summarize the
results by creating an annotated bibliography or a review paper.
The annotated bibliography must organize the papers in some useful
way, providing guidance and analysis for others interested in the
subject area. An electronic format is preferable, such as a
database or a Web page, or both. A review paper must be suitable
for publication, and provide an overview, bioliographic methods and
results, and discuss the significance of the coding analysis.
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