OPTIMIZING LIT SEARCHES

Marisa Conte 7 Nov 2011 [email protected]

Agenda • Library services • Clinical resources • Optimizing lit searches • Techniques • Resources

LIBRARY SERVICES

Research consultations • Literature searches (resources, search strategies) • Citation management resources • Expert/collaborator identification • Funding sources • Copyright and publication options

www.lib.umich.edu/thl

MGetIt

MGetIt

Request PDF

CLINICAL RESOURCES

Clinical resources Aggregated platforms • Access Medicine • MD Consult • Stat!Ref

Clinical point-of-care tools • Dynamed • UptoDate e-books • Springer collection • ScienceDirect • Wiley

MD Consult

Science Direct

Springer ebooks Home > Browse by subject > Pathology > Books/Reference

Wiley

SciVal Research Profiles

INTRO TO RESEARCH RESOURCES

Get to know resource - search features • Is there a controlled vocabulary?

• MeSH in PubMed, EMTREE in Embase • Are there special searches (aka “canned searches”) you can use?

• Clinical Queries or Topic-Specific Queries in PubMed • Drug or Disease searches in Embase • How are Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) treated?

• Are there special characters, eg. “” for phrase searching, * for wildcard

Get to know resource – results • How are results returned?

• Is there a related-results algorithm?

• Can you use the results to find more relevant citations?

OPTIMIZE LIT SEARCHING

Overview • Search construction • Concept building • Boolean logic • Vocabulary • Techniques • Sources • PubMed • EMBASE • Scopus and ISI Web of Science

Search construction • Concept building • Boolean logic • Vocabulary • Techniques • Limits and filters • Evaluating searches

Search construction: Concept building • Identify major concepts of topic • Identify synonyms for major concepts • PICO helps for clinical questions

Search construction: Boolean Logic AND Breast Cancer Obesity OR Breast Cancer Obesity NOT Breast Cancer Obesity

Search construction: Boolean Logic Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Breast cancer OR Breast neoplasms OR Breast tumors AND Obesity OR Obese OR Overweight OR BMI AND Incidence OR Epidemiology

Search construction: Vocabulary Keywords Controlled vocabularies

Search construction: Vocabulary Keywords Controlled vocabularies What are they?

  Literal search Looks for occurrences of words When to use?

 Current topics  Not easy to describe concepts  No vocabulary exists in database Examples  Drug names (Lipitor, Prozac)   Slang Concepts (Swine flu, oil spill)

Search construction: Vocabulary Keywords Controlled vocabularies Pros     Cons Very current projects/topics No knowledge of controlled vocabulary necessary Slang Broad, difficult to describe concepts     Not consistent Burden on end-user to discover synonyms (might miss some) Too many (irrelevant) results Difficult to limit results

Search construction: Vocabulary Keywords Controlled vocabularies What are they?

 Set of words or phrases used to describe concepts  Dictionary of accepted terms for a database When to use?

 Searching a database that uses one Examples  MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)  EMTREE (Embase)

Search construction: Vocabulary Keywords Controlled vocabularies Pros  Burden on database to discover variations in terms   Consistency & reproducible searches Specific & targeted (increased relevancy) Cons  Restrictive  Burden on end-user to learn vocabulary  Vocabularies differ (no consistency)

Search construction: Vocabulary MeSH Keywords Controlled vocabularies

Search construction: Techniques • Truncation • Wild cards • Adjacency • Phrases • Boolean • Parentheses  obes*  an?sthesiology

    screen* adj10 cancer* “breast cancer” “vitamin d” AND cancer (“breast cancer” OR “breast neoplasms”) AND obes* Note: Techniques vary from database to database

Search construction: Techniques • Limits – use sparingly (language, species, pt)

Search construction: Techniques • Exploding subject headings • Use differs across databases

MeSH entry - pathology

Search construction: Techniques • Subheadings

RESEARCH RESOURCES:

PUBMED, EMBASE, SCOPUS, WEB OF SCIENCE

www.pubmed.gov

BASIC SEARCH: REVIEW

Spellcheck, ATM, wildcard and truncation, phrases, Boolean, nesting

Embase

Useful Embase features • Drug search • • Route of administration Subheadings – eg pharmacology, clinical trial, drug toxicity • Specify animal studies: cell, tissue, model, experiment • • Disease search Controlled vocabulary - EMTREE

Emtree heading - pathology

Embase disease search

Embase: Advanced limits

ISI Web of Knowledge

ISI content & features • • Web of Science • Conference proceedings • Veterinary medicine journals BIOSIS Previews • Conference proceedings • Animal studies • International coverage

Scopus Life sciences and biomedical sciences Excellent for citation tracking and references

Google Scholar Unclear content base Good for known-item searching (PubMed content) Citation information not reliable

Google - operators • • • • Use Google Images for photos, illustrations, etc.

Limit search to specific filetypes, websites, etc. using Advanced Search filetype:ppt OR filetype:pdf OR filetype:doc for specific document types (eg protocols, whitepapers, presentations) inurl:(website or domain) to search a specific URL – eg inurl:cancer.gov or inurl:.edu to search NCI or educational sites

[email protected]

Thanks!