Where's the best place to look for nutritional and fitness research/studies?

Hi Craig,

PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) is a good place to obtain abstracts and the occasional free full text article. If you're a member of the American College of Sports Medicine, you'll receive access to their two journals, which are two of the top exercise science journals out there.

It's important to keep in mind that just because something's published, it doesn't mean that it's true, just that the authors found an association in their research. It's always important to be a little skeptical when reading research studies, even in the best journals. How many subjects did the study have? Is the number of subjects enough to draw an association that can be applied to your work or is their publication just some interesting information? Do the methods and conclusions make sense?

Also, all journals have impact factors, a kind of ranking system. The higher the impact factor of a journal, the more reputable it is. You can do a google search to discover impact factors. For example, it is more competitive to be published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (MSSE) (impact factor of ~2), which has an impact factor than it is to be published in Journal of Strength and Conditioning (impact factor of ~0.7).

If it's any helpful, I tend to check MSSE first for exercise physiology information before looking for other sources and embarking on a literature search to find information.

Thanks Lauren! Never knew such a thing about impact factors. I'd hit the "this article was helpful" option, had there been one.