Finding and using knowledge

• Article/Research Article/Original Research – provide a complete description of original research findings.
• Letters/Research Letters/Short Reports/Communications – are short descriptions of research findings.
• Review Articles – do not cover original research but provide a comprehensive summary of a topic by identifying and summarising the results of original articles on the topic. Reviews may be narrative or may provide quantitative summary estimates based on the application of meta-analysis. See definitions below
• Case reports – a descriptive, exploratory or explanatory analysis of a person, group or event. Publishing case reports in BMJ – pay to publish or view?
• Viewpoints/Opinions – essays presenting opinion on a specific topic (sometimes controversial)
• Editorials – comments on articles published within journal issue; usually written or commissioned by the journal editor(s).
• Quality Improvement Reports - Journals focussed on quality of healthcare often have more specialised articles referred to as “Quality Improvement Reports” or “Quality in Practice Articles”.
• The journals below are some of many that encourage publication of QI and Patient Safety projects:

BMJ Case Reports
BMJ Open Quality
BMJ Quality and Safety
Implementation Science
International Journal of Medical Students
Postgraduate Medical Journal
Quality in Primary Care
Student BMJ
The Student Doctor Network

Types of review articles include, but are not limited to:

• Scoping review - a preliminary assessment to identify the nature and extent of review
• Systematic review - a comprehensive review in response to a research question that aims to identify, select and synthesize all of the published research
• Critical review - seeks to identify the most important items and often results in a hypothesis or model
• Literature review - looks to review what has been recently published and allows for building on previous works and identifying gaps
• Meta-analysis - takes data from multiple studies of a similar nature and combines them to provide more precise effect of the results