Excerpts from AACR website

The challenge of reading a scientific article is worth the effort when you consider that all of the major journals contain articles that have been appraised by experts prior to being accepted for publication. This process—called peer-review—helps ensure that published results are scientifically valid and grounded in evidence, not just reflecting someone’s political agenda or wishful thinking.

In general, finding published information begins with a search. Since you are looking specifically for information about scientific research, there are more direct ways to find the articles you want than using internet search engines like Google or Yahoo.

PubMed allows you to search MEDLINE, the National Library of Medicine’s database. MEDLINE contains more than 15 million references from thousands of worldwide biomedical journals. PubMed is a great way to dive quickly into the scientific literature. In general, PubMed displays the title, authors and an abstract—or short description—of an article. It also usually provides a link to a site with the full text of the article (some full-text options are free, but many require a journal subscription or a fee).

Once you start searching, you will begin to get an idea of the major journals that are publishing information about your topic. Going directly to the journals’ websites can yield useful information, especially once you have done preliminary searches and have a better idea of what you are looking for in a field. The different types of journals that may be useful to you include:

◊ General science (top-notch examples are: Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science)

◊ General clinical (the big ones are: Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine)

◊ Cancer-specific (including: Cancer Research, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute)

◊ Dedicated to specific cancers (for example: Breast Cancer Research, Leukemia and Lymphoma, Lung Cancer)

There is currently a movement among some scientists to provide free access to research findings. The journals of the Public Library of Science, known as PLoS, do just that. The most relevant to medical topics are PLoS Medicine and the recently launched PLoS Clinical Trials

If you live near a state medical school library, it’s probably worth a visit, since these libraries tend to have free public access to many medical journals.

If you are having trouble finding a copy of an article, one possibility is to contact the authors themselves. An often more reliable way is to go through the press office of the authors’ university or hospital. You can locate these offices by going to an institution’s main website and searching for the term “communications,” “public relations” or “news.” A public information officer can often help you track down a copy of an article, either in print or as an electronic document. This person can also help relay messages to a researcher or a doctor.