Livestrong Medical Reference Guidelines

Use an in-text citation to credit the source of a statistic not considered common knowledge. Example: More than 9 percent of U.S. adults have diagnosed diabetes, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Include an in-text citation when reporting data from the literature. Include the month and year of publication and the journal title in quotation marks. Example: The authors of a research study report published in January 2015 in the "World Journal of Gastroenterology" found ...

Topic View Medical assignments require at least 3 professional references.
Use online sites intended for professionals and/or current medical texts.
Do not use abstracts of articles as references; you must have access to the full article.
Practice guidelines from professional and public health organizations are preferred for treatment, diagnosis and prevention articles.
Systematic reviews and meta-analysis articles are preferred over individual research studies.
Do not present preliminary research findings (that have not been verified or replicated) from a single study as medical facts.
Randomized, controlled clinical trials are preferable to nonrandomized studies for discussing treatment or prevention efficacy. Results must be from phase III or later (unless such trials have not been conducted).
If relying on observational studies as primary resources, evaluate potential biases in the study design to assess the applicability of the findings.
Avoid presenting an observed association as causation, or relying on pilot or other small studies as primary resources.
Do not generalize findings of a research study beyond the parameters of the study design.

Use medical terminology to avoid patient/consumer information sites.
- Search for “differential diagnosis pharyngitis,” not “causes of sore throat.”
Use longer, more specific search strings to get more specificity in your results.
- Instead of “flu medication,” try “recommended antiviral influenza treatment.”
Try site-specific searches if you know where you want to look.
- For example, search the CDC website by including site:cdc.gov before your search query “site:cdc.gov syphilis treatment guidelines.”
Limit searches to specific types of organizations by including URL extensions.
- Search government sites by including site:.gov at the start of your search
- Search academic sites by including site:.edu
- Search nonprofits by including site:.org
Specify what terms you don’t want included in your search by including a “-“ in front of your search.
- For example, search for vaccines not including influenza by searching for “vaccines -influenza.”

Try using Google Scholar or Google Books for more authoritative Google searching.

Filter search results by age and relevance.
Used advanced search to search by author name, journal name or date if you know what you’re looking for.
Note: Google Scholar includes results from “pay-to-publish” online journals. You can vet an online journal by checking to see if it’s in the National Library of Medicine Catalog of Journals referenced in the NCBI databases.

Use all the same tips you would for general searching.
Be sure to vet the author by looking them up. Make sure they are authoritative sources of information (credentials, training, etc.).

National Library of Medicine Resources.

PubMed: great for current medical literature.

Select filters from the left side of your search results.
- Select “Free full text available” to make sure you only get open access articles.
Select types of articles to get higher quality studies (clinical trial, meta-analysis, review, systematic review and practice guideline are all recommended).
Tip: If you find an abstract but the full article requires payment, try copying the article title into Google and searching for it.
PubMed Subset Bookmarks:

TOXNET: information on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health and toxic releases.

Additional TOXNET resources:

Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information System (CCRIS) — Carcinogenicity and mutagenicity test results for over 8,000 chemicals
Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology Database (DART) — References to developmental and reproductive toxicology literature
Genetic Toxicology Data Bank (GENE-TOX) — Peer-reviewed genetic toxicology test data for over 3,000 chemicals
Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) — Hazard identification and dose-response assessments for over 500 chemicals
International Toxicity Estimates for Risk (ITER) — Risk information for over 600 chemicals from authoritative groups worldwide
Drugs and Lactation Database (LactMed) — A peer-reviewed and fully referenced database of drugs to which breastfeeding mothers may be exposed. Household Products Database — Health and safety information on household products
Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) — elucidates molecular mechanisms by which environmental chemicals affect human disease

NCBI Bookshelf: access to over 1,400 online texts and reports on topics related to healthcare and life sciences.