Searching for review articles on a general subject
- Go to Ovid, choose a recent Medline database eg 1996 to present.
- Enter subject, let Ovid suggest MESH headings, choose the most appropriate term and click
"focus" box.
- Limit that set to full text, review articles, English.
- Choose another database and re-execute strategy if unsuccessful.
Bear in mind that review articles, esp those written by specialists, often reflect the prejudices of their authors. That is why they are often ignored by others with their own experience. You could well ask Why they are published considering the lack of rigour, as well as the lack of influence.
Searching for the answer to a specific question
- Check Cochrane database on Ovid to see if a systematic review has already been done.
- Check Medline (also on Ovid, enter subject, let Ovid suggest MESH heading, Choose most appropriate
term and then click "explode" option.
- Enter same subject but as a keyword (type ".mp" after it), and use $ as wildcard character
to include possible variations (eg ruptur$ instead of rupture/ruptured/rupturing).
- Enter other possible keywords, then combine using "OR" function.
- Only combine with "AND" or limit when you have the biggest possible set.
- Change database to Embase and re-execute search.
- Remember to record your search strategy. The easiest way to do this is to email yourself your citations from the search page; this is an option at the bottom of each page, after you click the email button another window opens in which you enter your email address. Here you will find a box to tick if you want the search strategy included.
There are a number of clever tricks to using Ovid, for full details click on help during the search then select "Command line syntax". To combine sets 1 and 2, type "1 and 2" in the search box. To search for words that are found within 5 words of each other in the text, type "word1 adj5 word2". To limit set 1 to newborn infants, type "limit 1 to newborn infant".
Searching the Net
- The biome search engine looks at biomedical sites.
- Excite uses yahoo, google and others at same time, does Boolean, language specific, domain specific.
- Hotbot can look for specific file types.
- Clinical Queries option on PubMed.
Use Preview/index to get started - add terms 1 by 1, use clipboard to collect articles.