UX Caucus Database Tips

Written by Hilary Kraus and Zahra Premji Why is proximity searching valuable? In systematic searching, there is an inherent tension between sensitivity and precision. According to the Cochrane Handbook, "Searches for systematic reviews aim to be as extensive as possible in order to ensure that as many of the relevant studies as possible are included in the review. It is, however, necessary to strike a balance between striving for comprehensiveness and maintaining relevance when developing a search strategy." ( Chapter 4, Section 4.4.3: Sensitivity versus precision ) One strategy for achieving this balance is the use of proximity operators. As explained in the Cochrane Handbook's Technical Supplement to Chapter 4, "Use of proximity operators helps to ensure that searches are more sensitive than would be the case with direct adjacency or phrase searching, and can also facilitate ease of searching where there are multiple possible variations of a phrase which would othe...

What is a PMID? A PMID, also known as the PubMed Identifier, is a unique number assigned by the National Library of Medicine to all records included in PubMed. It appears under the citation information on each record. PMIDs do not change over time or during processing and are never reused. Searching for articles using their PMIDs can be a very efficient way to find known items or test searches (e.g., Testing for Article Inclusion in Ovid and Testing for Articles in PubMed ). To search for a set of known records in PubMed, enter a string of PMIDs in the search box without the Boolean "OR" and without the [pmid] field tag. If you use [pmid], you will need to use the Boolean "OR" to combine them. These three searches return the same results: 26104772 11038025 35106283 26104772 OR 11038025 OR 35106283 26104772[pmid] OR 11038025[pmid] OR 35106283[pmid] Below we will highlight some search tips for finding PMIDs across various databases Too long didn't read (tldr) c...

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...

 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"

This week's tip comes to us from Paije Wilson , MLIS Health Sciences Librarian at the Ebling Library. She credits the Systematic Reviews, Scoping Reviews, and other Knowledge Syntheses guide from McGill Library as the original source for the tip. You can filter results in Scopus by date added to the database . I've found this handy when researchers want everything added to a database after or before a specific date, regardless of when the items were published. ORIG-LOAD-DATE > [insert Unix time without brackets or year month day] ORIG-LOAD-DATE < [insert Unix time without brackets or year month day] For example, ORIG-LOAD-DATE > 1616907600 or ORIG-LOAD-DATE > 20210328 will retrieve items added to Scopus after March 28, 2021 (regardless of publication date).  You can also AND a before and after filter together to get a date range. I've only seen this tip on a couple of pages, including this blog page ( https://christinaslisrant.scientopia.org/2014/04/29/se...

 To search for an EXACT phrase in Scopus, you'll need to modify your phrases from using "double quotation marks" to {curly brackets}. Scopus uses both "Loose" and "Exact" phrases : "Exact To find documents that contain an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in braces : {oyster toadfish}. RESULT: This includes any stop words, spaces, and punctuation which you included in the braces. For example: {heart-attack} and {heart attack} will return different results because the dash is included.   Wildcards are searched as actual characters, e.g. {health care?} returns results such as: Who pays for health care? Loose Double quotation marks are important when searching for a loose/approximate phrase. Example: Loose phrase: TITLE-ABS-KEY( "heart attack") searches for documents where heart attack appear together in the title, abstract, or keywords.   Not a loose phrase: TITLE-ABS-KEY( heart attack) searches for documents where heart and attack...