UX Caucus Database Tips

You probably know that Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) evolve over time; you can read more about why and how in the Introduction to MeSH , under Changes to MeSH Terminology. You may also have noticed that, in the MeSH Database , some MeSH headings have no dates, some have one, and some have two. "What do the dates mean in MeSH?" is a hot topic (and is explained in this brief YouTube video , if you'd like the basics in less than two minutes).  To sum up: If no date is listed, it means the term has been used since MEDLINE began in 1963.  If there's a single date, it's the year the term was introduced, and no other term has ever been used for that concept. If two dates are listed next to Year introduced, which looks like YYYY (earlier yyyy) : The first date, YYYY , is when that MeSH heading was added, but not when the concept  was first added to MEDLINE. The date in parentheses ( earlier yyyy ) is when the concept  was introduced, but at the time was called somethin...

You might think that a recent publication indexed in PubMed with Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe* / pathology  would be retrieved by this query in Ovid MEDLINE :   *Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / pa [Pathology]   You would be incorrect. One example is Xie K, Royer J, Larivière S, et al. Atypical connectome topography and signal flow in temporal lobe epilepsy. Prog Neurobiol. 2024;236:102604 . doi:10.1016/j.pneurobio.2024.102604.  and you can compare for yourself by searching for 38604584.ui in your preferred Ovid Medline segment, where it will show   This issue, of Major Topic MeSH-with-subheading not being accurately imported into Ovid, seems to affect literally every article since mid-2022 with a Heading/subheading combination marked as a Major Topic. What’s happening, and why? At the moment of intake processing, Ovid breaks apart headings consisting of a Major Topic and subheading.   NLM Data Ovid HIV Infections* ...

Scopus is a very large multidisciplinary database with a wide range of sources. According to Elsevier, almost 99% of journals indexed in Embase and MEDLINE are included in Scopus. Unlike Embase, which uses the Emtree thesaurus for indexing (the full Emtree thesaurus is only available in Embase), or MEDLINE, which uses MeSH (accessible publicly via the MeSH Browser or MeSH Database ), Scopus does not have its own controlled vocabulary or thesaurus searching capabilities. So what are the "indexed keywords" in Scopus? And are they beneficial or harmful to your searches? The origins of "indexed keywords" Journal article records in Scopus are supplied directly from publishers, and thus arrive with no indexing. Scopus then enriches these references whenever possible, using thesauri Elsevier either owns or licenses. The “indexed keywords” that display in references are added when Scopus finds an exact item match with a reference from Embase or MEDLINE. For example, an ar...

Did you know that in addition to main headings and subheadings, CINAHL also uses tertiary subheadings? You've probably seen them in the Major and Minor Subject fields, but (if you are like me) you likely didn't notice them. In the example below, "Michigan" is a tertiary subheading linked to the heading "Colleges and Universities." At first glance it appears to be a subheading like "Prevention and Control," but in this case, it's actually different! This example shows the "Michigan" tertiary subheading linked to a heading and subheading: From the EBSCO help documentation ,  "Tertiary headings are used to indicate an age group or geographics . These headings are added when the age group or geographic area is key to the topic under discussion. The tertiary headings can be linked directly to CINAHL subject headings or to the end of a subject heading/subheading combination."  For example, these are the Age Group tertiary s...

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 ...