Searching other spaces

PubMed

Previously we looked at carrying out a search in the Ovid Medline database.  However the PubMed database contains pretty much the same set of papers

The PubMed basic search function searches in a much simpler 'google type'  way, but it can be less controlled, which could result in missed and/or a larger number of irrelevant results

If you search PubMed in this way it is very important to always check how your search has been interpreted. You can do this by checking the Search details on the middle of the right side of the page

• Click on See more ...

If you look at the image below you can see that PubMed has translated the entered search term of elderly to aged.  This is correct as the Subject Heading (MeSH) for elderly is aged.  However,  you can see here that PubMed is searching for the word aged in All Fields.  This means that it will find this word in any space, including the abstracts of papers.

eg :

The study population was aged under 16 years

Researching bacteria found in aged cheeses

This is not the interpretation of the word that we want

You can edit this search box and then rerun the search

• Try deleting the highlighted section above and see how many papers this takes away

However we would recommend searching PubMed using its inbuilt Search Builder function.

• • Check for the correct Subject Headings in the MeSH search

• Tick the little box next to the correct Subject Heading

• Click Add to Search Builder

• Repeat this process to add the other 2 concepts (elderly and exercise) to the search

• Click on Search PubMed

• You can then use the limits on the left hand side to reduce the results by trial type or date

You can see below that the result this time is now almost identical to the result we obtained in Ovid Medline

Google Scholar

It is not possible to search Google Scholar in a systematic way!  A search in Google Scholar will search through the full text of the item, this is why you always retrieve such large results

A search in Google Scholar is looking for the actual words you enter (rather than any indexing terms) you need to follow the method previously discussed in the free text section of this guide

• In MS Word create 3 sets of brackets (elderly)(depression)(exercise) These are your 3 concepts

• Add your synonyms to the appropriate brackets with an OR in between each word.  Phrases need to be contained within speech marks to keep the words next to each other in the results. eg "older people"

• Truncation symbols do not work in Google Scholar, so you will need to spell out each different ending to a word. eg exercise OR exercising

• Try pasting the string below into the Google Scholar search box:

(elderly OR "older person" OR "older people" OR "older women" OR "older men" OR senior OR retiree) (depression OR depressive OR MDD) (exercise OR exercising)

You can link your Google Scholar account to the SA Health Library so that you access the full text of the papers for free

• Click on the 3 horizontal lines on the top left of the page to open the menu

• Click on the Settings logo

• Click on Library Links