Access to Practical Nursing (APN) & Practical Nursing Research Guide

Creating a research strategy is always a good idea. It will help you:

1. Focus on developing a good thesis statement;

2. Develop an effective research plan;

3. Equipping you with the ability to discuss your information needs with librarians and others who will help you in locating the information you need; 

4. Start developing a list of keywords and keyword phrases to use in your search;

5. Better manage your time; and

6. Develop a plan to manage the information you discover and incorporate it into your assignment.

Documenting your searches

It's good practice to document and save your search results and methods for how you found your information. By saving your search results in one place, you can re-run, edit or share your results and strategies with other people and keep a thorough record of your review process.

Managing your references

Reference management could include a handwritten journal, Word document, Spreadsheet,  or Bibliographic Management software.  Make sure to record the following bibliographic metadata.

• Author(s)

• Title of:

  • Article and Journal

  • Book 

  • Webpage

  • Streaming Video

• Date of publication 

• Volume Issue (Number) of Journal

• Digital Object Identifier (doi)

• URL  

Zotero is free open-source bibliographic management software.

• Recommended for undergraduate students.

• Perfect for student assignments and assessment tasks or smaller research projects.

• Easy to learn and use, but offers some advanced features; refer to Zotero's documentation. 

• Limited free storage, refer to Zotero storage.

• Free and open source software (FOSS).

• Download Zotero

  Available for Windows, macOS & Linux