Tip #4: Ovid MEDLINE Adjacency and Field Tags

This tip was submitted by Kathryn Vanderboll (University of Michigan): 

In Ovid MEDLINE, using adjacency with .kw. does not work the way you (probably) want - use .kf. instead!

While searching (surg* adj (educat* or instruct* or learn* or teach* or train*)).kw., our team couldn't figure out why our sentinel article tagged with with the author supplied keyword "surgical teaching" wasn't showing up.

Through trial and error, we learned that .kw. adjacency only works between lines. That is, how close keywords are to each other on different lines. For example, (surg* adj teach*).kw. picks up articles with keyword headings like: 

But does NOT pick up articles that might have keyword headings like:

 

To use adjacency searching within a single keyword heading, you'll need to use .kf.

The Ovid help documentation notes:

• "The Keyword Heading (KW) field contains the Keyword Headings assigned by authors. Keyword Headings are the author keywords. To retrieve every Keyword Heading that includes a particular word, search for the word in the Keyword Heading Word (KF) field."
• "The Keyword Heading Word (KF) index allows you to retrieve every Keyword Heading assigned by authors that include a particular word. Do this by searching a single word in the Keyword Heading Word (KF) field. "