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CHMC31 Intermediate Inorganic Chemistry

Workshop FAQs

What are the specific functions of ChemDraw?
Please see the ChemDraw help page on this guide, as well as the ChemDraw User Guide, for a full overview of key features/functions of the software.

How do I efficiently go through all the references/literature sources and pick out important info?
Having a well-defined scope for your research question is the best starting place, as it will a) help you to focus on only results specifically relevant to that topic, and b) will limit the amount of literature you need to assess. If you have too many or too few studies, consider revising your research topic. About 100 results is a good number to aim for when doing a general literature search (though there may be more or less depending on your topic).

Some additional tips for scoping your search:

  • Use chemistry-focused search tools (e.g. SciFinder-n) to weed out extraneous literature from the get-go
  • Make use of databases' built-in filters/limiters (e.g. the journal article document type) to reduce the number of results

Once you have a focused search, I then recommend doing a quick scan of titles/abstracts from your search results to identify studies. For anything that seems relevant, do a quick scan of the full text, focusing on specific sections as you go (e.g. the Results and Discussion sections may be helpful for better gauging a study's relevance). For anything that passes all the preliminary scans, you can do a full read of the entire text. 

The following resources give some pointers on key things to be mindful of as you read scientific articles: