PAIR: Tools and Resources
Tools and resources to consider in your scholarly activity:
This guide describes their best practices for scientific data management. The intent of these practices is to improve the accessibility and usability of your data. These practices are most useful when considered at the onset of project planning and implemented during data collection. This (and other guides) can helpful in figuring out the best way to name and organize your files.
Center for Clinical and Translational Science
CCTS offers numerous services to support research efforts at UIC: biomedical informatics (including data queries of the electronic medical record), statistical consultation, community engagement consultation, and others.
Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR)
NICHSR at the National Library of Medicine was created to improve “..the collection, storage, analysis, retrieval, and dissemination of information on health services research, clinical practice guidelines, and on health care technology, including the assessment of such technology.” They have a nice list of data, tools, and statistics.
The UIC library provides information on bibliographic/citation management programs that let you build your own library of citations, organize & share your citations, build reference lists with the click of a button, format papers with in-text citations, and more.
The CONSORT (CONsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) 2010 guideline is intended to improve the reporting of parallel-group randomized controlled trial (RCT), enabling readers to understand a trial’s design, conduct, analysis and interpretation, and to assess the validity of its results. Extensions of the consort statement have been developed for different types of trial designs, different interventions, and different types of data.
IRB (Institutional Review Board)
The Office for the Protection of Research Subjects provides administrative support for the review and approval of research protocols (experiments) involving humans and human embryonic stem cells. Information is available on training and online submission. Forms and templates are available (e.g., research protocol).
The UIC Library offers a number of relevant resources: data management, literature reviews, interlibrary loan, and librarian consultation.
Overleaf is an online LaTeX and Rich Text collaborative writing and publishing tool that makes the whole process of writing, editing and publishing scientific documents much quicker and easier.
Program for Readability In Science and Medicine (PRISM) is a Group Health Research Institute initiative to improve the quality of print materials used in communication with research participants. Their primary goal is to create written study materials that are readable and participant-centered.
American College of Physicians (ACP) offers members and other clinicians numerous quality improvement resources to help improve patient care. Also, tools, templates, and additional information is available through the UIH Hospital Intranet, American Society for Quality, DMAIC, and iSixSigma.
R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. R is free and popular in data management and analysis. Get started learning R through DataCamp, swirl or Lynda. Consider RStudio as your environment for coding.
REDCap is a mature, secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. Use this to enter and manage your data.
Research Development Services (RDS)
RDS manages resources and provides tools to support your research including: internal funding, authorization to apply to a one per institution “limited submission” grant opportunity, and grants databases to match your expertise with compatible funding opportunities.
StatTag is a free, open-source software plug-in for conducting reproducible research. It facilitates the creation of dynamic documents using Microsoft Word documents and statistical software. Using StatTag means that modifications to a dataset or analysis no longer require transcribing or re-copying results into a manuscript or table.
Webstore has become the primary software distribution source for the University of Illinois. Offering over 350 software titles (e.g., SAS for data analysis) for purchase or download, WebStore strives to provide the software you need at the lowest possible price. This includes software for both University-owned computers or personally-owned home computers.
Additional references: