Academic literature on the topic 'Published research'

In this thesis, I present my published works in the broad field of medical microbiology. Over a period of thirty years I have worked in a range of settings,. including hospital and public health laboratories, major reference laboratories and academic science departments. I have studied significant public health issues associated with each position, and therefore, while there is no single theme in my work, the emphasis of my research has been very much on the development and validation of methods and their application to public health microbiology. My early work was on obligately anaerobic bacteria. I began to study Clostridium difficile during my doctoral research and continued for several years after I completed my PhD. My expertise in anaerobic microbiology led to several book chapters and ultimately to an undergraduate textbook and an edited volume on anaerobic microbiology methods. My work on anaerobic bacteria forms one of three themes in my commentary. During my tenure at the University of Ulster; I began to broaden my research to encompass pathogens in the environment. Areas of interest included the survival of pathogenic bacteria during anaerobic digestion of cattle slurry and the anaerobic bacterial flora of flax retting. I moved to the University of West Indies in Barbados, where for 13 years I taught microbiology to medical students and provided clinical microbiology support to the hospital and public health laboratories. This venue provided me with the opportunity to follow a diverse research agenda, with a strong concentration on diseases of local and regional public health importance. I have included some of this work in my third commentary theme, clinical and public health microbiology. My major contributions to the field have undoubtedly been in the diagnosis, taxonomy and epidemiology of leptospirosis. I began working on leptospirosis in 1992 in the former Medical Research Council laboratory in Barbados. My work here included both serological and molecular diagnostic studies, and epidemiological research on reservoir animals and other zoonotic diseases. After moving to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), my work was focussed on developing tools for molecular diagnosis and molecular typing of leptospires and on taxonomy of leptospires. At the CDC, I was also the Acting Chief of the Special Bacteriology Reference Laboratory. In this capacity, I had the opportunity to lead a group focussed on the identification and characterization of previously unrecognised bacterial pathogens. Some of this work is included in my third commentary theme. I moved to Saskatchewan in 2003, to my current position in the provincial public health laboratory. My research in Saskatchewan has been directed towards the use of molecular techniques for diagnosis and epidemiological typing of significant public health pathogens, while mentoring younger scientists. Community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a public health challenge in our communities and I have made significant contributions to a collaborative effort to understand and control these infections in Saskatchewan. In recent years I also have assumed a leadership role in biosafety and biosecurity regulatory issues and in quality assurance and proficiency testing. An abbreviated copy of my curriculum vitae is included to provide an indication both of the range of my research work and my other contributions to the field. In the interests of brevity, papers presented at conferences and published abstracts are not included.

This paper covers the origin, history and scope of Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, the editorial process and timeframes, research and scholarship for librarians, the peer review process, the components of a good research article, and practical tips on what editors look for in a manuscript submission with examples from Partnership journal. It is intended for anyone writing a research article but should be particularly helpful to first-time authors. The paper was first given as a presentation at Ontario Library Association Super Conference on January 31, 2013.<br>Ontario Library Association

This paper is based on an analytical study of 335 keywords extracted from titles and abstracts of 70 research articles, taking ten from each year starting from 2000 to 2006, in decreasing order of relevance, on the subject Fermi Liquid, which is a specific subject under the broad area of Condensed Matter Physics. The research articles have been collected from the bibliographic database of INSPEC. The keywords are indexed to critically examine its physical structure that is composed of three fundamental kernels, viz. keyphrase, modulator and qualifier. The keyphrase reflects the central concept, which is usually post-coordinated by the modulator to amend the central concept in accordance with the relevant context. The qualifier comes after the modulator to describe the particular state of the central concept and/or amended concept. The keywords are further classified in 16 classes on the basis of the four parameters, viz. Associativeness, chronological appearance, frequency of occurrence and category. The taxonomy of keywords will enable to analyze research-trend of a subject and to identify potential research-areas of a subject.

As South Africa prepared to host the 30th International Congress of Psychology in 2012, a call was made to reflect on the strengths of and challenges facing contemporary South African Psychology. This paper presents our response to our brief to focus on social issues by presenting the results of a situational analysis of South African Psychology over the last five years and comparing this corpus of data to a similar analysis reported in Macleod (2004). Articles appearing in the South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP) and abstracts in PsycINFO with the keyword ‘South Africa’ over a 5½ year period were analysed. The content of 243 SAJP articles and 1986 PsycINFO abstracts were analysed using the codes developed by Macleod (2004). Results indicate: an increase in the number of articles, a reduction in the percentage of articles using quantitative methodologies and ‘hard’ science theoretical frameworks (particularly in the SAJP), and an increase in qualitative, theoretical, and methodological papers, and papers using systems-oriented theory (particularly in the SAJP). Traditional topics of assessment, stress and psychopathology continue to dominate, with social issues such as housing, land reform, development programmes, water resources and socio-economic inequities being largely ignored. Most research continues to be conducted in Gauteng, KwaZulu/Natal and the Western Cape, predominantly with adult, urban-based, middle-class participants, sourced mainly from universities, hospitals or clinics and schools. Collaborations or comparisons with other African, Asian, South American and Middle East countries have decreased. While the analysis presented in this paper is limited by its exclusion of books, theses, research reports and monographs, it shows that in published research there are some positive trends and some disappointments. The limited number of social issues featuring in published research, the under-representation of certain sectors of the population as participants, and the decrease in collaboration with, or comparison to, countries from the global ‘South’ represent challenges that require systematic attention.

Abstract The aim of this doctoral thesis is to present methods of search, evaluation and analysis of a specific research domain (schizophrenia) from four perspectives: bibliometric analysis of 1) Finnish doctoral theses and 2) Finnish journal articles on schizophrenia, and meta-analysis to determine the prevalence of 3) alcohol use disorders and 4) cannabis use disorders in schizophrenia. Over the years, the number of Finnish articles on schizophrenia has increased, as well as the amount of international collaboration. Bibliometric methods were also found to be feasible in the evaluation of psychiatric research. However, the methods should be used with care. Articles written in collaboration with international organisations seem to receive more citations and are published in journals with higher impact factors, which highlights the importance of developing scientific networks. A considerable proportion (20%) of Finnish scientific schizophrenia articles were published in theses consisting of original papers. The current funding system supports the writing of doctoral thesis consisting of original articles and favours epidemiological and biological research over research into medical treatments. This may affect the research culture in Finland and even slow down the development and improvement of the national treatment system. The reported prevalence of alcohol and cannabis use disorders has differed considerably between studies. No meta-analysis on alcohol or cannabis use disorders in schizophrenia has previously been conducted. In studies (n = 71) on schizophrenia patients, the median prevalence was 15% for current and 26% for lifetime alcohol use disorder, and 16% for current and 27% for lifetime cannabis use disorder. Alcohol use disorders are common in schizophrenia patients, although a declining trend was observed when comparing previous reviews. Cannabis use disorders were found to be more common in younger and first-episode patient samples, as well as in samples with a high proportion of males.