An advanced search technique that helps you find documents where two or more terms appear within a specified distance from each other. This method is particularly useful when you want to ensure that the terms are closely related in the text, which can improve the relevance of your search results. Common operators are near, within, adj. e.g. cats near/4 dogs ( within 4 words of each other). Order of terms depends on the search engine or database

Words or symbols used in search queries to refine and manipulate the results. They help you combine or exclude keywords to get more precise search outcomes. Here are the most common Boolean operators:

AND: Narrows your search by combining terms. All terms must be present in the results. For example, cats AND dogs will find documents that mention both cats and dogs.

OR: Broadens your search to include results that contain any of the terms. For example, cats OR dogs will find documents that mention either cats or dogs.

NOT: Excludes terms from your search. For example, cats NOT dogs will find documents that mention cats but not dogs.

A way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other knowledge organization systems. Controlled vocabulary schemes mandate the use of predefined, preferred terms that have been preselected by the designers of the schemes, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, which have no such restriction.

Aids tool used in evidence-based practice, particularly in healthcare and clinical research, to formulate and answer clinical questions. Usually presented in the form of a protcol(e.g. PICO, PICO-ST, PEO, SPICE, etc.)

Free text searching is a search method where you enter keywords or phrases directly into a search engine or database without using predefined terms or controlled vocabulary. This type of search allows you to search for words exactly as they appear in the text of documents, articles, or other content. (also see search field searching)

A note attached to a term in a controlled vocabulary, such as a thesaurus, that gives guidance on how to use the term. In Medline a descriptive message for MeSH headings, providing definitions, synonyms, year of adoption, previous indexing, and cross references.

Search fields are specific areas within a database or search engine where you can focus your search queries to retrieve more relevant results. By targeting these fields, you can narrow down your search to specific types of information. Here are some common search fields:

Title: Searches for keywords within the titles of documents, articles, or books.

Author: Looks for works by a specific author, editor, or creator.

Search filters (sometimes called hedges) are collections of search terms designed to retrieve selections of records. Search filters may be designed to retrieve records of research using a specific study design or by topic or by some other feature of the research question.

Filters may have a very specific focus or may be high level. Search filters may be designed to maximise sensitivity (or recall) or to maximise precision (and reduce the number of irrelevant records that need to be assessed for relevance).

Search structure based on an evidence based practice framework such as PICO , SPICE, PEO

Words that are filtered out from a search string when the database runs the search (unless they are included within inverted commas). e.g.  “a,” “an,” “the,” “and,” “is,” and “in.”  e.g. Ovid SP databases do not use stopwords in the title and abstract field. 

A  form of controlled vocabulary that seeks to dictate semantic manifestations of metadata in the indexing of content objects (e.g.Medline = MeSH, Embase = Emtree)

A search technique where a portion (or stem) of a word is searched, and a symbol (preferably *but $ also works in Ovid) used to anticipate variants, usually as a suffix of the stem (e.g. therap* retrieves therapy, therapies and therapeutic). Consider carefully whether irrelevant variants may be captured by the chosen truncation. (e.g. child* will find child, children, childhood).

A special character (e.g. # or ?) used to represent multiple or single characters when searching for various combinations of characters in alphanumeric and symbolic names (e.g. wom?n retrieves woman and women). Do not anticipate between word hyphenation with ‘?’ or with ‘-‘. Ovid/Cochrane databases now interpret a hyphen as a space.