UX Caucus Database Tips

Back in January, I published "Tip #32: Non-Latin Characters in Ovid MEDLINE " which introduced my non-Latin/Roman characters investigation across databases. This week we will look at how PubMed handles the following examples: 17β-HSD (17 beta-HSD) cáncer (Spanish for cancer) سرطان (Arabic for cancer) diabético (Spanish/Italian/Portuguese for diabetic)   17β-HSD When you run the above search in PubMed, you can see that it automatically transliterates the β to "beta" from the search details. In this case, PubMed can handle Greek characters, so feel free to use them or the transliterated version in your search.      Some potential variations you may also want to consider - phrase with hyphens and/or double quotes, and spacing: 17beta-HSD - 833 (same as running "17beta HSD") 17betaHSD - 927 "17 beta HSD" - 281 17 beta HSD - 374 "17-Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenases"[Mesh] - 2922 "17 beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase" - 1516 17 beta-h...

 Have you been frustrated with exporting large numbers of Scopus search results as .ris into batches of 2000? Well, I've got some good news for you! Scopus has recently launched a new version of the Search results page which allows for exporting of up to 20K full document records in the CSV, TXT, BIB and RIS formats online. To switch over to the new results page, simply run a search, then click on the "Try the New Version" button at the top of the page.  You'll see that not only has the results page changed its look, but when you select your records for exporting, the form now allows you to export up to 20,000 in RIS format ! Check out this Scopus blog post to learn more - "Improved Scopus Export is ready to test drive"

I was recently digging through some MeSH terms while trying to find a paper about statistics and prevalence in PubMed. I found the following MeSH term: "Statistics" [Publication Type] ...but when I tried to include it in my search string, my results were flagged with a "Quoted phrase not found in phrase index: Statistics" error message: Ryan Cohen, MLIS, Customer Service Librarian, Contractor for the National Library of Medicine, NIH responded to my confused Tweet with some very helpful information about this type of MeSH term. Thanks, Ryan! MeSH terms/publication types are used for both cataloging records in the NLM Catalog/LocatorPlus and for indexing the citations of articles in MEDLINE. There are some MeSH terms/publication types that are only used for cataloging and/or indexing. The statistics MeSH publication type term is only used for cataloging records in the NLM Catalog/LocatorPlus . See the annotation on the MeSH browser record: Statistics MeSH ...