Perceptions of Care Providers in the Delivery of Newborns in the Kingdom
Project title: Perceptions of Care Providers in the Delivery of Newborns in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Literature Review
As I mentioned in the last email, this first week should be used to become familiar with your selected project area via a review of both peer-reviewed and grey literature. I advise the following approach to conduct a literature review:

1) Select databases to search.
• Peer-reviewed: refers to journal publications that have undergone extensive critique and evaluation by peers in the same field of publication.
? Recommended Databases: PubMed, Google Scholar
• Grey-literature: refers to informally published reports and or articles such as white papers, technical reports, news articles, etc.
? Recommended Databases/Sources: Google, Google Scholar, Google News, WHO, UN, World Bank, UNICEF, etc.
2) Create search terms.
• Based on your project title, develop a list of keywords to conduct your search with. This may require you to read a few “review” articles, or to add additional terms as you become familiar with the topic.
• Although Wikipedia should NEVER be used as a source in scientific work, it is a great place for an overview of general topics of interest (i.e., maternal health, emergency medical services, infant mortality, health forecasting, and quality management).
3) Conduct searches.
• Using your search terms, search and select any material that is relevant to addressing your question.
• Specifically look for information specific to your region of interest (i.e., Saudi Arabia), but also look for global best practices (from around the world) that are applicable to the local context.
? You may find limited content in your region, in which case, you have discovered an important gap in research (that you will help address!). In this case focus on the global as it relates to the local context.
4) Use reference managers.
• Reference Managers are great tools that help automate the process of creating a database of your literature for future reference. There are two tools that I recommend for use (and that I can offer training in).
• Use of these tools are optional, but they will greatly enhance your productivity and generally make your life easier. The choice of which one to use is up to you.
Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/
• This is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
? In order to use Zotero, there are two set-up methods. Chose whichever is more convenient (however it works best with Mozilla, Method 1)
? Method 1: Download the browser, Mozilla Firefox, and the accompanying Zotero in-browser software (left-side) and Word plug-in.
? Method 2: Download the standalone software (right-side) with the plug-in for your browser of choice (Safari, Chrome, or Mozilla).
• This tutorial will walk you through the set-up and use.
• Troubleshooting guide
EndNote/EndNote Web: http://endnote.com/ OR https://www.myendnoteweb.com
• A faster, easier way to manage research, references and bibliographies
? Overview video
• Standalone software (EndNote) is available for a 30-day trial period.
• The web version (EndNote Web) is free to use.
? Comparison of the two
• If you chose to use standalone EndNote, download 30-day trial of EndNote.
? EndNote Mac Tutorial / Windows Tutorial
• Alternatively, you can set up an account online with EndNote Web
? EndNote Web Tutorial
• Troubleshooting Guide
5) Organizing your research
• After reviewing the abstracts and papers of peer-reviewed materials, and the general content of grey-literature materials you should generate a list of the most applicable/relevant research.
• It is often helpful to organize this research by the type of information (i.e., demographics, innovative approaches, best practices, local, global, etc.) found in the content. These categorizations will come naturally to you as you review the material and think about the important aspects relevant to your study and the type of information you will need down the road (when writing the paper).
Even if you are not in Riyadh yet, we expect you to begin this process. By the end of this first phase, we expect you to hand us a preliminary citation list of this background research (APA citation style). Generating this list is very easy using the aforementioned reference managers, but their use is not mandatory. I am happy to conduct training workshops on their use.

One last note regarding the literature review phase. It is important to remember the aim of this exercise is to become familiar with the topic you’ve chose and determine the key issues of research and innovation therein. The more thorough the literature review, the easier it will be later on in the research process as you collect/clean/analyze data and prepare your scientific outputs (white paper or publishable first draft report).