Searching for veterinary evidence: A guide for equine professionals

There is more and more online information available at our fingertips, but how do we efficiently identify and extract relevant information for good clinical decision making? The aim of this review article is to provide equine professionals with the building blocks to be able to develop skills for expertly navigating the scientific literature in a timely fashion. This includes what key questions you need to ask before starting (why am I searching and how much time do I have), where the best places are to search and how to find freely available legal copies of papers (articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and dissertations). Additionally, how to best conduct an information search and what you get from searches of varying comprehensiveness. Finally, this article will cover where to find databases of research syntheses where others have already carried out the hard work for you and some advanced techniques which are likely to save you substantial amounts of time. This article draws together expertise from a panel of veterinary clinicians, nurses and technicians, information specialists and librarians and clinical researchers.