UX Caucus Database Tips

Positive update!  EBSCOhost APA PsycInfo, as of September 2025, offers what they're calling "Deep Explode." When explode is selected in the APA Thesaurus, all narrower terms are selected all the way to the bottom of the tree. Rather than being represented by a +, this explosion simply ORs together all the narrower terms in the search box itself. In what is now named (in all EBSCOhost databases in the new user interface) the Subjects authority, you can select the term and check the Explode box: Then use the Add to search button with OR selected in the drop-down menu. The main term and all narrower ones are added to the search box with the appropriate field code (DE), combined with OR. The search history, now called Recent activity, shows the search performed as expected. The information below is now out of date! Happy searching!

Many thanks to Erica Lake (Outreach Coordinator, NNLM Region 6 ) for this week's tip! LitSense is a free, web-based tool from NLM that enables simultaneous semantic searching of PubMed and PMC content. LitSense searches at the sentence-level rather than the article-level, allowing for direct retrieval of specific statements. And it searches by best-match and by meaning, retrieving articles containing sentences with an exact match of keywords as well as those with semantic similarity. Popular uses of this product Discover similar findings across different studies to compare and contrast. Locate and validate publications for evidence attribution. Identify MeSH terms and keyword variations for a PubMed search by reviewing the semantically similar results. Retrieve citations containing a phrase used by requestors when discussing their search topic or completing a search request form. Non-experts can type in a question as a sentence and retrieve relevant information without having to...