Tiptoeing into the Nutrition literature -- just one article to start
Peer-reviewed articles
Where to search : PubMed, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, CINAHL/APPsearch, Web of Science
Recognizing peer-reviewed (or refereed) articles (one example)
Original research (though you'll hear me say "primary research" too)
Recognizing primary -- look for Methods section; not a review or evidence summary
Look for format: introduction, methods, results, conclusions; Exceptions: systematic review/meta-analysis
Look for labels or filters
Examples: ToC, primary, review, PubMed
Community or population-based (not hospital/medical)
Life stage - search, filter
Implied (librarian interpretation): emphasize Nutrition. Are authors credentialed in Nutrition? Is it explicitly a Nutrition journal?
Results including p-value (confidence intervals)
Other: published 2017- , English language, human (not animal), PDF available with all tables and figures
A few search terms: (1) ultra-processed foods, (2) intuitive eating, (3) gut microbiome
"college students, "young adults"
1 Which words and phrases?
2 Which databases or search engines?
3 other: citations, past and future; author, and more
Easy open PDF .
Not quite so easy -- Find@ASU or Find@AppState in Google Scholar
Do it yourself -- search "article title" in Google Scholar
Only very rarely will an article be truly inaccessible.
Ask me for help, if you don't know. I also am grateful for reports about problems, such as links not working.
Also see CDC's Nutrition page, and the US Department of Agriculture's many resources, starting with nutrition.gov. Medline Plus also has a Nutrition page.
Present Knowledge in Nutrition, Volume 1 -- Basic nutrition and metabolism by Most of the peer-reviewed articles you'll find using PubMed, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, APPsearch, CINAHL, and other search interfaces will be original or primary research. Not all. You'll often see reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses (and maybe evidence summaries, guidelines, or position statements). You might also see editorials, commentary, news. All these are not considered original or primary.
Look for the standard format: short introduction, methods, results, and conclusions. If your article is in this format, it's not editorials, commentary, news. It's probably original research. But,
Look for terms like these, especially in the title or abstract: review, systematic review, meta-analysis, evidence summary, guideline, or position statement. If you don't see those, it's almost certainly original research.
Look for the standardized format, especially whether there is a Methods or Methodology section. Then look for the terms like review. If you see a methods section and you cannot see the article described as a review (or similar), it's probably original.
This is a very simplified approach, so please fell free to ask me to look at any articles with you. John Wiswell, wiswellj@appstate.edu .
More details, if you need them
One additional area of confusion is this. Some original research articles use data collected systematically by governments and other entities. Other original research articles are based on original data, data that's not collected or measured or described elsewhere. But original research does not have to have to start with original data.
Note that in some journals like the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, original research is labelled "Original Research." (This journal has an unusually high proportion of articles that are not original, but they're pretty well labelled.)
Original research where researchers collect or create their own data
*Nutrition-related & one stage of life (appropriate article)
*Original research/peer-reviewed (no review articles; no meta-analyses; no hospital-based/medical nutrition therapy studies; human participants only; international research is permitted but article must be written in English)
original research -- not review or meta-analysis
peer-reviewed
not hospital-based or medical
human subjects, not animals
English language
*Full-text article/PDF- no collapsed tables/figures or abbreviated version of article
