Reliable Sources of Health and
Medical Information
Mutiara Budi Azhar, Dr., SU., MMedSc
Faculty of Medicine Sriwijaya University
Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary
Sources
As you need information or conduct
research, you will consult different sources
of information.
You may be requested to find primary,
secondary, or tertiary sources.
Dr MBA
Information Sources
Primary Sources
Primary sources are original materials.
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have not been filtered through interpretation or
evaluation.
are original materials on which other research is
based.
are usually the first formal appearance of results
in physical, print or electronic format.
present original thinking, report a discovery, or
share new information.
Information Sources
Primary Sources. Cont
The definition of a primary source may
vary depending upon the discipline or
context.
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Information Sources
Primary Sources. Cont
Examples include:
Journal articles published in peer-reviewed publications;
Letters;
Newspaper articles written at the time;
Original Documents (i.e. birth certificate, will, marriage license,
trial transcript);
Proceedings of Meetings, conferences and symposia;
Records of organizations, government agencies (e.g. annual
report, treaty, constitution, government document);
Web site.
Dr MBA
Information Sources
Secondary Sources
are less easily defined than primary sources.
are interpretations and evaluations of primary sources.
are not evidence, but rather commentary on and
discussion of evidence.
However, what some define as a secondary source,
others define as a tertiary source.
The definition of a secondary source may vary
depending upon the discipline or context.
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Information Sources
Secondary Sources. Cont
Examples include:
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Dictionaries, Encyclopedias (also considered
tertiary);
Journal articles (depending on the disciple can be
primary);
Magazine and newspaper articles (this distinction
varies by discipline);
Textbooks (also considered tertiary);
Web site (also considered primary)
Information Sources
Tertiary Sources
consist of information which is a distillation and
collection of primary and secondary sources.
Bibliographies (also considered secondary);
Dictionaries and Encyclopedias (also considered
secondary);
Indexes, abstracts, bibliographies used to locate primary and
secondary sources;
Manuals;
Textbooks (also be secondary).
Dr MBA
Information Sources
Use up-to-date evidence
Look for reviews published in the last five years
or so, preferably in the last two or three years.
The range of reviews you examine should be
wide enough to catch at least one full review
cycle, containing newer reviews written and
published in the light of older ones and of morerecent primary studies.
Dr MBA
Information Sources
Choosing sources
Plos Medicine and other open access journals can be
useful as sources for images.
Some high-quality journals, such as JAMA, publish a
few freely readable articles even though most are not
free.
A few high-quality journals, such as PLoS Medicine,
publish only freely readable sources.
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Choosing sources. Cont
When searching for biomedical sources, it
is wise to skim-read everything available,
including abstracts of papers that are not
freely readable, and use that to get a feel for
what reliable sources are saying.
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Choosing sources. Cont
Biomedical journals
contains two major types of sources: primary
publications describe novel research for the first time
and review articles summarize and integrate a topic of
research into an overall view.
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Choosing sources. Cont
Biomedical journals
In medicine,
primary sources include clinical trials, which test new
treatments;
secondary sources include meta-analyses, which
combine the results of many clinical trials in an attempt
to arrive at an overall view of how well a treatment
works.
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It is usually best to use reviews and meta-analyses where
possible, as these give a balanced and general perspective of a
topicand are usually easier to understand!
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Peer reviewed medical journals are a natural choice as a
source for up-to-date medical information.
not all the material is equally useful, and some, such as
a letter from a non-expert, should be avoided.
Journal articles come in many types: original research,
reviews, case reports, editorials, and op-ed pieces,
advocacy pieces, speculation, book reviews, letters to
the editor and other forms of commentary or
correspondence.
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Choosing sources. Cont
Biomedical journals
There are at least 141 journals suitable for a small
medical library. Although this list is no longer
maintained, the listed journals are of high quality.
The core general medical journals include the
New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet,
the Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA), the Annals of Internal Medicine, the
British Medical Journal (BMJ), and the
Canadian Medical Association Journal.
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Choosing sources. Cont
Books
Medical textbooks published by academic
publishers are often excellent secondary
sources.
Ensure that the book is up to date, unless a
historical perspective is required.
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Choosing sources. Cont
Books
Major academic publishers (e.g., Elsevier,
Springer Verlag, Wolters Kluwer, and
Informa) publish specialized medical book
series with good editorial oversight;
volumes in these series summarize the latest
research in narrow areas, usually in a more
extensive format than journal reviews.
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Choosing sources. Cont
Books
Specialized biomedical encyclopaedias
published by these established publishers are
often of good quality, but as a tertiary source,
the information may be too terse for detailed
articles.
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Choosing sources. Cont
Books
Popular science and medicine books are useful
tertiary sources, but there are exceptions:
Most self-published books or books published by
vanity presses undergo no independent factchecking or peer review and, consequently, are not
reliable sources.
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Medical and scientific organizations
Statements and information from reputable major
medical and scientific bodies may be valuable
encyclopedic sources.
These bodies include the U.S. National Academies
(including the Institute of Medicine and the
National Academy of Sciences), the British
National Health Service, the U.S.
National Institutes of Health and
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the
World Health Organization.
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Medical and scientific organizations. Cont
The reliability of these sources range from
formal scientific reports, which can be the
equal of the best reviews published in medical
journals, through public guides and service
announcements, which have the advantage of
being freely readable, but are generally less
authoritative than the underlying medical
literature.
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Popular press
generally not a reliable source for scientific and medical
information in articles.
generally lack the context to judge experimental results; tend to
overemphasize the certainty of any result, for instance,
presenting a new and experimental treatment as "the cure" for a
disease or an every-day substance as "the cause" of a disease.
may also publish articles about scientific results before those
results have been published in a peer reviewed journal or
reproduced by other experimenters.
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Other Sources
Peer reviewed medical information resources
such as WebMD, UpToDate, Mayo Clinic, and
eMedicine are usually acceptable sources in
themselves, and can be useful guides about the
relevant medical literature and how much
weight to give different sources.
However, as much as possible we should cite
the more established literature directly.
Dr MBA
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Searching for sources
Search engines are commonly used to find biomedical
sources.
PubMed is an excellent starting point for locating peer
reviewed medical sources. It offers a free search
engine for accessing the MEDLINE database of
biomedical research articles offered by the National
Library of Medicine at the U.S. National Institutes of
Health.
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There are basic and advanced options for searching
PubMed; Clicking on the "Review" tab will help
narrow the search to review articles.
The classification scheme includes about 70 types
of documents.
For medical information, the most useful types of
articles are typically labeled "Guideline", "Metaanalysis", "Practice guideline", or "Review".
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Thank you very much for
your kind attention
Dr MBA
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References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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University of Maryland Libraries (2001) Primary, Secondary,
and Tertiary Sources.
Primary, Secondary, & Tertiary Sources. James Cook
University.
Young JM, Solomon MJ (2009). How to critically appraise an
article. Nat Clin Pract Gastroenterol Hepatol 6 (2): 8291.
Greenhalgh T (1997). "How to read a paper: Papers that
summarize other papers (systematic reviews and metaanalyses)". BMJ 315 (7109): 6725.
http://www.midrealm.org/starleafgate/Documents/Primary.pdf
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