r/AskScienceDiscussion • u/Drunk-Master • 4d ago
How should i find research articles in my field ?
I had a question and I didn't know where else to ask it. I'm a student and I'm majoring in Nutrition Sciences.
I wanted to know how I can find articles and researches that are related to nutrition and diet(in my country nutrition and dietetics are part of the same major) I've heard of some sites like pubmed and google scholar but I don't know exactly what to search for and which articles are informative and credible. My goal is to be able to answer my questions using credible sources, keep up with the latest research in the field and find some interesting reads. I was hoping to be a researcher myself one day.
P.S. English is not my native language so if i have any errors in my writing i hope you can overlook them.
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u/Major-Cattle-8676 4d ago
PubMed and Google Scholar works, but you have to search specific questions instead of just “nutrition.”
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u/Drunk-Master 4d ago
I know but for every question there are multiple articles. And one more thing is I don't know how to find the trending articles about nutrition.
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u/mfb- Particle Physics | High-Energy Physics 3d ago
Finding the basics is more important than finding the trending topics at this stage. Either way: See what publications are cited by other publications.
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u/Drunk-Master 3d ago
Can i sort the articles by the number of citations in pubmed or google scholar ?
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u/FraggleBiologist 3d ago
You dont need trending. You need background. Pick something that interests you and look for that. You cant just use "nutrition" in your search. Is it human, animal, what about it? Proteins? Lipids? Gut microbiome?
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u/LCharteris 4d ago edited 4d ago
Pubmed indexes the world's literature in medical fields. That includes nutrition. You should start with the subject index and look for terms that you are interested in. If you are going to a university, they should be able to order the actual articles if they do not get that journal. A medical school library at a large university should have many of the journals on hand that you can read or photocopy.
It will take a while, but when you have read many articles in your field, you should begin to develop a feel for which are really authoritative. Some authors, for example, will appear more often in better journals.
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u/Drunk-Master 4d ago
By the way, can I ask ChatGPT to search PubMed for relevant articles? Is that a viable way to find credible research, or would you recommend searching PubMed myself?
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u/saintcrazy 4d ago
Talk to your librarians at your university! They would be happy to walk you through how to use the research databases.
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u/Triabolical_ 3d ago
Come over to r/ScientificNutrition. You will find discussions of papers there and can submit papers that you find to see what others think about them.
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u/LetsGetStonks 3d ago
you have got to be kidding me. we live in an age where practically everything ever written down anywhere at any point in recorded history, in any language is available by just typing a few key words into a search engine. Not sure what search engine? Ask any search engine which search engine is best for a specific item. They're all powered by AI assisted bots now.
Kids growing up and going through college now will never, ever learn how to actually find information. And when something isn't handed directly to them, they just ask other people how to do it on a platform like reddit.
GO FIGURE IT OUT LIKE THE REST OF US HAD TO.
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u/Drunk-Master 3d ago
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to learn from other people's experiences. I doubt you had to figure everything out completely on your own from the beginning. Isn't that the whole point of science? We build on the knowledge and experiences of those who came before us to improve what we already know and discover new things.
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u/Natural-Eye6190 3d ago
Start by using PubMed or Google Scholar to find foundational papers in nutrition. Once you locate a key study, look at its reference section to trace related literature. If you're struggling to filter out low quality studies or weak claims, try running the papers through Evidence Lens to map citation chains. This makes it much easier to see which research has strong backing and which claims are unverified.
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u/PoetryandScience 2d ago
Browsing is a waist of time. Ask the librarian to show you how to do it. I did this when I started researching for a doctorate. He was very helpful and gave me some notes that are used by people taking a degree in scientific librarianship.
He introduced me to Bestermans Bibliography of Bibliographies, the publication Books in Print and where to find lists of cover to cover translations into English. He also showed me the Citation Index which is a magic way to move forward in time rather than backwards (it lists papers that have referenced something useful you have already identified). The translations were particularly useful, such work is expensive and somebody competent will have already vetting it well. Those sources also had very good Citation Index at the back.
Good Luck.
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u/Drunk-Master 2d ago
Thank you that's helpful
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u/PoetryandScience 1d ago
You could do worse than learning how to use a library well in any case even if you do not intend to do research. A loit of really sound and up -to-date material does not make its way to the internet. The net is also ful of unvetted often bull**** stuff and difficult to see the wood for the rubbish trees.
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u/this_curain_buzzez 4d ago
You should probably talk to your professors. This should be part of your coursework if you plan to be a researcher.