Doing Your Own Research

Today, more than ever before, those with access to the Web can do their own research to learn more about current treatments, research in the field, advocacy movements, legislative issues, and much more. Here, we provide information on using search engines and directories, on locating research abstracts and articles, and on connecting with others through listserv communities to help do-it-yourself researchers get started on finding answers to all their important questions.

Internet Search Engines and Directories

 Search engines and resource directories can help you continue your quest for information on healthy development, developmental disorders, and related topics. To get started, the following links explain how to conduct a search on the Internet:

How Search Engines Work

Google
www.google.com
Google is one of the best known and most effective search engines. This is a good site to begin your research

Links to search engines
http://searchenginewatch.com/links
This site offers a comprehensive list of search engines

Depending on what you’re searching for, the following medical search engines and directories may expedite your search:

Center for the Study of Autism Links Page

Data Resource Center (DRC) for Child and Adolescent Health

Finding information about psychological tests (PDF)

Harriet Lane Links (formerly Pediatric Points of Interest)

Indiana Resource Center for Autism

Ingenta

Kinderstart Search Engine

Loansome Doc (from the U.S. National Library of Medicine)

PubMed

National Library of Medicine

General Help On the Internet

Web Searching, Sleuthing, and Sifting

University at Albany Libraries: Internet Tutorials
http://library.albany.edu/internet
An easy to understand introduction to the internet, how to find sites and how to evaluate information

Other Helpfull links

Ask ERIC
askeric.org
Database of education information containing more than one million abstracts of documents and journal articles

Find Articles
www.findarticles.com
A vast archive of published articles that you can search free of charge. Articles date back to 1998

PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez
PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, provides access to over 11 million MEDLINE citations back to the mid-1960's and additional life science journals

QuackwatchSM Your Guide to Health Fraud, Quackery, and Intelligent Decisions
http://www.quackwatch.org

Cornell University Advice on Evaluating Webpages
Evaluating Web Pages

Locating Research Abstracts and Full Text Articles

 The following article was published in the Winter 2001 premiere edition of Advances Magazine, the member periodical of the Cure Autism Now Foundation. "Parents as Partners in Research"

 To locate research abstracts, visit the National Library of Medicine’s Pubmed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi. Use their simple search engine by entering the topic or topics (e.g., autism or autism and genetics ) to find abstracts about the subjects you are interested in that have been published in scientific journals. You can also search by entering an author's name (e.g., Cook, E.). Each abstract also provides you with a link to related articles. There are excellent tutorials on this site with instructions for more advanced search techniques.

Some abstracts found on PubMed will provide you with a Web link directly to the online full text version of the article within the site of the journal where it is published. Some of these journals provide full text articles for free, while others require a subscription or single use fee. You can gain free access to some full text articles by visiting the Web site of the author. You can order some articles at Northern Light, www.northernlight.com for a per article fee. You can also order full text articles for a fee, from your local medical school library, using the National Library of Medicine Loansome Doc Ordering System at www.nlm.nih.gov/loansomedoc/loansome_home.html. There are also private services that will send you the full text version of articles by mail or fax, for a fee, such as the Medical Information Services at 1(800)999-1999 or the Uncover Company at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/ or 1(800)787-7979.

 Listserv Communities

 A listserv (stands for List Server) is an automatic mailing list distribution system. People sharing a common interest (e.g., professional, educational, and special interest groups) may subscribe to a given listserv. Depending on the service, listserv members either receive regular mail from a single source or from all members who send email to the Listserver. Other subscribers contributions to an e-mail thread (i.e., collective e-mail responses to an e-mail post) are distributed to the entire subscriber base via e-mail. The result is similar to a newsgroup or forum, except that the messages are transmitted as e-mail and are therefore available only to individuals on the list.

 The following are popular listservs that serve the autism community:

Autism-Mercury Group at Yahoo.com

Biochemical Strategies in Autism

Boston Floortime Group

GFCGRecipes@yahoogroups.com

Metabolic or Mitochondrial Disease in Autism

St. Johns University Autism and Developmental Disabilities

Talk Autism Communication Services

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