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 ...

A recent search project on "17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency" inspired me to investigate how non-Latin characters are handled across various databases. This week we will look at how Ovid MEDLINE handles non-Latin and special characters using the following examples: 17β-HSD (17 beta-HSD) cáncer (Spanish for Cancer) سرطان (Arabic for Cancer) The help documentation wasn't in-depth enough for my needs so I reached out to Ruth Bernstein, a Tech Support team member at Wolters Kluwer, for further assistance. This post is based on our email exchange. Thanks, Ruth! If you attempt to run any of the above searches, you will get the following error message: 17β-HSD As indicated by the error message, special characters (such as β) are not searchable on Ovid . You will need to transliterate the Greek character and include it with the acronym spelled out, the full name of the substance, and the substance as a MeSH term.  17 beta HSD.mp. 277 17-Hydroxysteroid Dehydr...

  Guest post by Erika Lake,  erica-lake@uiowa.edu The National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce proximity search capabilities have been added to PubMed. This means you can now search for multiple terms appearing in any order within a specified distance of one another in the [Title] or [Title/Abstract] fields. You’ll find details on how to build a proximity search as well as examples in the new NLM Technical Bulletin article, PubMed Update: Proximity Search Now Available in PubMed . You can also check out the newly added “Proximity Searching” section of the PubMed User Guide here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/help/#proximity-searching Finally, NLM’s Office of Education and Training and NCBI have assembled a Quick Tour introducing users to the basics of Proximity Searching, which can be found via this direct link . This tour has also been added to the PubMed Trainer’s Toolkit . Have fun exploring, and email Erica Lake at erica-lake@uiowa.edu to let her know what y...

Today's tip is from Rose Turner, rlt@pitt.edu, and her partner Tom Murphy VII . Rose writes,   I’m working on an Ovid SR and something that I’ve done is added a bookmark to my toolbar that resizes the Ovid query box. With the new interface the box is bigger, but it can still be annoying for me to resize to build or look at long strings. Example:   To add the bookmark: Right-click on your browser toolbar and select “Add Bookmark” (Firefox) or “Add page” (Chrome). Name the bookmark (ex, “Ovid Resize”) Add URL: javascript:document.getElementById('ovidclassic_focus').setAttribute('style', 'width:880px; height:200px'); You can customize the window size by changing the width and height numbers (mine are set to 880 by 200 px)   Now when you are working in Ovid you can just click your “Resize” bookmark to make the query box larger.     You can set it up to have as much space as you want.

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...

This week's tip is another contribution from our colleague Sandy Campbell  and her colleagues at the University of Alberta. Sandy writes: I don't think I sent you this one. It is another CINAHL weirdness. When I search Matis (which is the name of an Indigenous people), the first three results returned are "mates", but the 4th is MATIS. That one isn't the right subject, but you can see that it has interpreted the term matis as mates, as well as matis. It took me a while to figure out why when I was searching for South American Indigenous people, I got a paper on African rhinoscerous mates. "Matis" brings up 98 results. That should be enough to return a unique search. If you search Germa, it asks if you want to search Germa or Germany, but it doesn't do that with Matis So in my South American search hedge, I've ended up putting quotes around every term, just to be sure. Here are the numbers of  results returned by Sandy's search terms...

 A few years ago I ran into a search quirk when translating a lengthy search from PubMed to Ovid MEDLINE. My Ovid results were significantly larger and it wasn't immediately obvious what was happening. After much testing and consulting with my colleagues (thanks, Mark MacEachern !), we finally pinned it down to a single MeSH term returning vastly different results between the two platforms .   Ovid - exp Food/ 1,428,580 results PubMed - "Food"[Mesh] 701,490 results We figured out what was causing the difference, but there was nothing in the help documentation that explained why it was happening. Even though the searches appeared to be the same, both MeSH terms were exploded, the platforms appeared to be handling them differently. I had to reach out to Ovid to get an answer for my remaining question. Over the course of a few weeks and many emails, they were finally able to provide a clear explanation: Ovid was including “Drug Terms” in the explode, where PubMed was not...

ETA: Many thanks to Whitney Townsend for being a second set of eyes to check my testing strategies! Building on our earlier post, Tip #25: Using Subheadings in PubMed , here are some more fun things to know about PubMed's subheadings...  Did you know that PubMed's subheadings have their own hierarchy? You can see the full list of Subheadings categories in the MeSH database . And just like you find with other MeSH terms, PubMed also automatically explodes subheadings.  For example, when you search "Blood Glucose/analysis"[Mesh] , you are getting all of the relevant lower-level subheadings under "analysis" [Subheading].  This MeSH and subheading combo includes: "Blood Glucose/ analysis "[Mesh] "Blood Glucose/ blood "[Mesh] "Blood Glucose/ isolation and purification "[Mesh] "Blood  Glucose/ cerebrospinal fluid "[Mesh] In the screenshot below, you can see that ORing the other subheadings in doesn't increase or chang...