- Ability to limit searches to research articles, articles from peer reviewed journals, care plans, and articles authored by nurses. In 1996, soon after most home computers began automatically bundling efficient web browsers, a free public version of MEDLINE was deployed. Also, while the Scopus and Web of Science assumptions we made might be true for coverage, they are likely very different when looking at recall, as Scopus does not allow the use of the full features of a thesaurus. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. 2006 Jan;94(1):5560. (DOCX 19kb). However, searching databases is laborious and time-consuming, as syntax of search strategies are database specific. In short, the method consists of an efficient way to combine thesaurus terms and title/abstract terms into a single line search strategy. Other specialized databases, such as CINAHL or PsycINFO, add unique references to some reviews where the topic of the review is related to the focus of the database. National Library of Medicine [26] found that Cochrane CENTRAL included 95% of all RCTs included in the reviews investigated. 2015 Dec;12(6):313-27. doi: 10.1111/wvn.12114. Integrity of Databases for Literature Searches in Nursing: Avoiding Predatory Journals. Additionally, search strategies are limited to a maximum of 256 characters, which means that creating a thorough search strategy can be laborious. The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on a reasonable request. -, McKibbon KA, Fridsma DB. Syst Rev. A pragmatic evaluation of a new method for librarian-mediated literature searches for systematic reviews. PubMed is a database that uses a search engine called Entrez. Our study shows that, to reach maximum recall, searches in systematic reviews ought to include a combination of databases. Himmelfarb subscribes to OVID MEDLINE which provides an enhanced search interface. We are aware that the Cochrane Handbook [7] recommends more than only these databases, but further recommendations focus on regional and specialized databases. For example, an article entitled "Maxillofacial injuries associated with domestic violence" would include the following MeSH terms: One of the benefits of using MeSH terms is that when you search using MeSH terms you get all the articles about a topic, regardless of what term the authors used. The contribution of databases to the results of systematic reviews: a cross-sectional study. MEDLINE Complete is a leading full-text database of biomedical and health journals, providing full text for thousands of top medical journals with cover-to-cover indexing. When looking at the overall recall, the combination of Embase and MEDLINE and either Google Scholar or Web of Science could be regarded sufficient with 96% recall. Special topics databases such as CINAHL and PsycINFO should be added if the topic of the review directly touches the primary focus of a specialized subject database, like CINAHL for focus on nursing and allied health or PsycINFO for behavioral sciences and mental health. The database is freely accessible on the Internet via the PubMed interface and new citations are added Tuesday through Saturday. doi: 10.1136/jamia.1999.0060006. Why Use CINAHL? Lemeshow AR, Blum RE, Berlin JA, Stoto MA, Colditz GA. Searching one or two databases was insufficient for meta-analysis of observational studies. J Kerman Univ Med Sci. Lastly, access to databases is often limited and only available on subscription basis. For this study, we searched to achieve as high a recall as possible, though our search strategies, like any other search strategy, still missed some relevant references because relevant terms had not been used in the search. It is an essential research tool for doctors, nurses, health professionals and researchers. Searching the MEDLINE Literature Database through PubMed: A Short Guide Michaleff ZA, Costa LO, Moseley AM, Maher CG, Elkins MR, Herbert RD, Sherrington C. CENTRAL, PEDro, PubMed, and EMBASE are the most comprehensive databases indexing randomized controlled trials of physical therapy interventions. Learn more about our disclaimer. 2016;5:39. WB drafted the first manuscript, which was revised critically by the other authors. The largest percentage of records in PubMed comes from MEDLINE (95%), which contains 25 million . This system, called PubMed, was offered to the general online user in June, 1997, when MEDLINE searches via the Web were demonstrated. The huge volume of bibliographic citations was manually compiled. The 2 most frequently used resources were journals (print and online) and the MEDLINE database. Starting with the most recent articles, we determined the databases searched either from the abstract or from the full text until we had data for 200 reviews. 2020 Oct 1;108(4):564-573. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2020.915. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) provides free access to MEDLINE through PubMed. Unique results from specialized databases that closely match systematic review topics, such as PsycINFO for reviews in the fields of behavioral sciences and mental health or CINAHL for reviews on the topics of nursing or allied health, indicate that specialized databases should be used additionally when appropriate. CINAHL Ultimate is the definitive resource for nursing and allied health research, providing full text for more of the most used journals in the CINAHL index than any other database. This shows that many database searches missed relevant references. An overview of the broad topical categories covered in these reviews is given in Table2. Ignoring one or more of the databases that we identified as the four key databases will result in more precise searches with a lower number of results, but the researchers should decide whether that is worth the >increased probability of losing relevant references. ", "PubMed related articles: a probabilistic topic-based model for content similarity", "How to read a paper: The Medline database", "PubMed Tutorial Building the Search - Search Tools - Journals Database", "Research Guides: Impact Factors, and other measures of scholarly impact: Indexing in Medline", "Predatory journals: The dark side of publications", "Research Guides: Predatory Publishing: MEDLINE vs. PubMed", "MGH Guides: Scholarly Communication: Predatory Journals", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MEDLINE&oldid=1143955600, U.S. National Library of Medicine (United States), 40 languages for current journals, 60 for older journals. Accessibility MEDLINE is an index of the biomedical journal literature produced by the National Library of Medicine. This situation continued through the beginning of the 1990s and the rise of the World Wide Web. 2021 Apr-Jun 01;44(2):102-110. doi: 10.1097/ANS.0000000000000349. We selected the domain from a pre-defined set of broad domains, including therapy, etiology, epidemiology, diagnosis, management, and prognosis. Rethlefsen ML, Farrell AM, Osterhaus Trzasko LC, Brigham TJ. PubMed is free and publicly available: by using PubMed, researchers can search more than 30 million citations to the biomedical literature. - Research articles include the names of the . The growth of PubMed Central (PMC) and public access mandates have affected PubMed's composition. Beckles Z, Glover S, Ashe J, Stockton S, Boynton J, Lai R, Alderson P. Searching CINAHL did not add value to clinical questions posed in NICE guidelines. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! However, the combination with Google Scholar had a higher precision and higher median recall, a higher minimum recall, and a higher proportion of reviews that retrieved all included references. PubMed/Medline-A Reliable Resource | Disseminating Nutrition Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Using similar calculations, also shown in Table5, we estimated the probability that 100% of relevant references were retrieved is 23%. Using MEDLINE to find health science journal articles However, particular analyses of the literature or database developments . Search > 2.3 million conference abstracts. Google Scholar, Zheng MH, Zhang X, Ye Q, Chen YP. Your privacy choices/Manage cookies we use in the preference centre. 2005;58:86773. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2023 Mar 21. doi: 10.1007/s10926-023-10110-w. Online ahead of print. For a sample of 200 recently published systematic reviews, we calculated how many had used enough databases to ensure 95% recall. For example, a search for myocardial infarction (the MeSH term for heart attack) will give you all articles about heart attacks regardless of whether the authors used the term myocardial infarction or heart attack. The four databases that had retrieved the most unique references (Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar) were investigated individually and in all possible combinations (see Table4). MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. 2008;14:4014. Privacy Syst Rev. A systematic approach to searching: how to perform high quality literature searches more efficiently. Part of These are mostly unique PubMed references, which are not assigned MeSH terms, and are often freely available via PubMed Central. When the number of references from other databases was low, we expected the total number of potential relevant references to be low. J Med Libr Assoc. Journal Selection for MEDLINE - National Library of Medicine Our experience has shown us that it is also impacted by the ability of the searcher, the accuracy of indexing of the database, and the complexity of terminology in a particular field. 2021 Apr 1;109(2):275-285. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2021.1129. [10], MEDLINE functions as an important resource for biomedical researchers and journal clubs from all over the world. By 1960 a detailed specification was prepared and by the spring of 1961 a request for proposals was sent out to 72 companies to develop the system. Ross-White A, Godfrey C. Is there an optimum number needed to retrieve to justify inclusion of a database in a systematic review search? What is lost when searching only one literature database for articles relevant to injury prevention and safety promotion? Medline (PubMed) is a research database covering all aspects of medical and biomedical research. 2013;2:115. Beyer FR, Wright K. Can we prioritise which databases to search? The MEDLINE with Full Text database is an unfiltered database that contains over 5,000 full-text journals related to the biomedical and health fields. Based on these calculations, we estimate that the probability that this random set of reviews retrieved more than 95% of all possible included references was 40%. Introduction to. The database contains more than 28 millions citations, derived from over 5,200 journals in about 40 languages Covering the biomedical and life sciences, and indexed with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) from the NLM controlled vocabulary. -, Coumou HC, Meijman FJ. Gehanno JF, Thaon I, Pelissier C, Rollin L. J Occup Rehabil. $1,250. Because precision is defined as the number of relevant references divided by the number of total results, we see a strong correlation with the total number of results. Bull Med Libr Assoc. A total of 292 (17%) references were found by only one database. The other authors declare no competing interests. Searching multiple databases for systematic reviews: added value or diminishing returns? Percentage of systematic reviewsof a certain domainfor which the combination Embase, MEDLINE and Cochrane CENTRAL reached a certain recall. Younger P. Internet-based information-seeking behaviour amongst doctors and nurses: a short review of the literature. Those databases that contributed the most unique included references were then considered candidate databases to determine the most optimal combination of databases in the further analyses. 2 for the comparison of the recall of Embase, MEDLINE, and Cochrane CENTRAL per review for all identified domains. However, Embase is only accessible via a paid subscription, which generally makes it challenging for review teams not affiliated with academic medical centers to access. MEDLINE was the most likely to be among consulted resources compared to any other . The selection of databases used when carrying out literature searching for a systematic review can have a significant impact upon the number of records retrieved and the subsequent stages of the review in terms of time and resources spent as well as the review's conclusions. The MEDLINE database contains over 12 million references to scientific literature, with about 3/4 of recent articles including an abstract of the publication. Of the 11 references included in this review, one was found only in Google Scholar and one only in Web of Science. Performance was measured using recall, precision, and number needed to read. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Entrez and PubMed can also find articles similar to a given one based on a mathematical scoring system that takes into account the similarity of word content of the abstracts and titles of two articles. Embase retrieved the most unique included references, followed by MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Google Scholar. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. [15] The Journals Database (one of the Entrez databases) contains information, such as its name abbreviation and publisher, about all journals included in Entrez, including PubMed. Based on the record numbers of the search results in EndNote, we determined from which database these references came. Medical Library, Erasmus MC, Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam, 3000 CS, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, Kleijnen Systematic Reviews Ltd., York, UK, School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI), Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands, Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus MC, Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, You can also search for this author in 2014;21:34354. Abstract This study compares the usefulness of the MEDLINE and CINAHL databases for students on post-registration nursing courses. WB designed the searches used in this study and gathered the data. For the databases that retrieved the most unique included references, we calculated the number of references retrieved (after deduplication) and the number of included references that had been retrieved by all possible combinations of these databases, in total and per review. An official website of the United States government. CINAHL - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics Beginning in May 2013, the number of records retrieved from each search for each database was recorded at the moment of searching. The topics of the reviews studied here may simply have fallen into those categories, though the diversity of the included reviews may point to a more universal applicability. A secondary aim is to investigate the current practice of databases searched for published reviews. Lawrence DW. Systematic Reviews 2014;67:11929. Oermann MH, Wrigley J, Nicoll LH, Ledbetter LS, Carter-Templeton H, Edie AH. Since May 2013, the first author prospectively recorded results from systematic review searches that he performed at his institution. It covers more than 50 nursing specialties and includes quick lessons, evidence-based care sheets, CEU modules and research instruments. In 23 reviews included in this research, Scopus was searched. Of the individual databases, Embase had the highest overall recall (85.9%). Searching additional databases except PubMed are necessary for a systematic review. MEDLINE, the most common database accessed through Ovid, 6 essentially produces the same articles as PubMed with a few exceptions. PLoS One. 2011. Higgins JPT, Green S. Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions: The Cochrane Collaboration, London, United Kingdom. What are the benefits of using certain databases? Such as why would PubMed was launched in 1996 and, since June 1997, provides free and unlimited access for all users through the internet. US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (1982), United States National Library of Medicine, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Internet Access to the National Library of Medicine", "Number of Titles Currently Indexed for Index Medicus and MEDLINE on Pubmed", "The proportion of cancer-related entries in PubMed has increased considerably; is cancer truly "The Emperor of All Maladies"? Embase and MEDLINE combined with either Google Scholar or Web of Science scored similarly well on overall recall (95.9%). Check tags help identify the subjects and language of research studies such as: Publication types identify the kind of article presented such as: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) describe the actual content of an article and provide details about the information discussed in the article. In that case, Google Scholar might add value by searching the full text of articles. ", MEDLARS cost $3 million to develop and at the time of its completion in 1964, no other publicly available, fully operational electronic storage and retrieval system of its magnitude existed. author reply e140. Halladay et al. The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It is therefore important to search MEDLINE including the Epub Ahead of Print, In-Process, and Other Non-Indexed Citations references. We documented the department of the first author. Unlike using a typical Internet search engine, PubMed searching of MEDLINE requires a little investment of time. Evidence-Based Research: MEDLINE Search Help - Academic Guides at Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. 7 day access to Embase.com (limited 4 subscription purchases a year) Search > 32 million abstracts and indexes. We copied from the MeSH tree the top MeSH term directly below the disease category or, in to case of the intervention, directly below the therapeutics MeSH term. Comput Biomed Res. We aimed to determine the optimal combination of databases needed to conduct efficient searches in systematic reviews and whether the current practice in published reviews is appropriate. PubMed Nevertheless others have concluded that a single database is not sufficient to retrieve all references for systematic reviews [18, 19]. While the database itself is unfiltered, you can still use it to find filtered, evidence-based practice resources, including systematic reviews. J Am Med Inform Assoc. Abstract. To our surprise, Cochrane CENTRAL did not identify any unique included studies that had not been retrieved by the other databases, not even for the five reviews focusing entirely on RCTs. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Using that combination, 93% of the systematic reviews in our study obtained levels of recall that could be considered acceptable (>95%). Although we did not use these special topic databases in all of our reviews, given the low number of reviews where these databases added relevant references, and observing the special topics of those reviews, we suggest that these subject databases will only add value if the topic is related to the topic of the database. Usually 10-12 headings are assigned to each record. Indication of which journals are available at Himmelfarb Library in print and/or electronically. Respondents indicated resources used in answering a specific clinical question from a list of 19 possible resources, including MEDLINE. On 5 January 2017, we searched PubMed for articles with the phrase systematic review in the title. Though we suspect that searchers who are not information specialists or librarians would have a higher possibility of less well-constructed searches and searches with lower recall, even highly trained searchers differ in their approaches to searching. J Clin Epidemiol. PMC Article [14] Selection is based on the recommendations of a panel, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee, based on scientific scope and quality of a journal. Nearly 5,000 journals are read and their individual articles indexed and added to the MEDLINE database, which contains information about over 12 million journal articles.