MEDLINE
Carlos A. Almenara, PhD
Online and Offline Resources In Psychological Assessment
PSY494P122 (April 23th, 2014)
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WHAT’S PubMed?
PubMed
 PubMed Health is a service provided by
the National Center for Biotechnology
Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National
Library of Medicine (NLM).
 The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)
is the world's largest medical library. It has
millions of records of books and journals
about all aspects of medicine and health
care on its shelves.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
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WHAT’S
MEDLINE?
MEDLINE
 NLM has been indexing the biomedical literature
since 1879.
 What was once a printed index to articles, the Index
Medicus, became a database now known as
MEDLINE.
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MEDLINE
 So, MEDLINE is the U.S. NLM premier
bibliographic database and primary content
of PubMed
 Contains over 20 million references to
journal articles in life sciences dating back
to 1946.
 Primary concentration is on biomedicine.
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MEDLINE
 Coverage is 5600 worldwide journals, but
most records (about 93%) are from Englishlanguage
sources or have English
abstracts.
 Approximately 84% of citations added in the
last five years include a published abstract.
 Since 1996, free access to MEDLINE has
been available to the public online via
PubMed.
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MEDLINE
 MEDLINE is also available through major Databases suppliers,
being OVID the most used.
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MEDLINE
 The Literature Selection Technical Review
Committee (LSTRC) meets three times a
year and considers approximately 180 titles
for MEDLINE at each meeting.
 Final approval is made by the Director of the
NLM.
 Titles are considered for scope and
coverage, quality of content, quality of
editorial work, production quality, audience,
and type of content.
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MEDLINE
 The MEDLINE® Basic Bibliographic Citation
contains:
 Title of the journal article
 Names of the Authors
 Abstract published with the article
 Controlled Vocabulary search terms (Medical Subject
Headings, MeSH)
 Journal Source Information
 First Author Affiliation
 Language in which the article was published
 Publication Type (description of the type of article, e.g.,
Review, Letter, etc.)
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MEDLINE
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MEDLINE
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 “Indexed for MEDLINE” Are complete
records (when MeSH terms and other
indexing terms are added)
MEDLINE
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
 NOTE: The PMID might be used in
Mendeley
MEDLINE
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http://sfx.muni.cz
 NOTE: The PMID might be used in SFX
MEDLINE
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 Some articles may never become MEDLINE
citations and won’t have MeSH terms.
 Out-of-scope Articles from selectively indexed
MEDLINE journals
 Articles from issues of journals published
prior to selection for MEDLINE indexing
(OldMedline).
 Articles from non-MEDLINE journals,
including author manuscripts in PubMed
Central (PMC) that would not normally be in
PubMed.
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BASICS
PubMed
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 PubMed is one of the NCBI databases
PubMed
 Help and tutorials.
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PubMed
 A free tutorial is available online.
 Understand PubMed's scope and content.
 Understand how the MeSH vocabulary is used to
describe and retrieve citations.
 Build a search using MeSH and PubMed search tools
(Details, Filters, History, Search Builder, etc.)
 Manage your results using display, sort, the Clipboard,
save, print, e-mail and order features and My NCBI
filters.
 Save your search strategies.
 Link to full-text articles and other resources.
 Use special queries and other PubMed/NCBI tools.
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PubMed
 PubMed Tools
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PubMed
 More resources.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
PubMed
 News.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
PubMed
 You may also use the tab “Resources” on
the top
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PubMed
 You may also use the tab “How to” on the
top
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PubMed
 Sign in to NCBI (customization).
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MeSH
(Controlled Vocabulary)
PubMed
 MEDLINE uses a controlled vocabulary,
meaning that there is a specific set of terms
used to describe each article.
 Familiarity with this vocabulary will make
you a better PubMed searcher.
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PubMed
 The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®)
 Used for subject analysis
 Used for indexing journal articles for MEDLINE,
and also cataloging books, audiovisuals
 MeSH terms are arranged in a hierarchical
categorized manner called MeSH Tree
Structures and are updated annually.
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Video: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/video/
PubMed
 MeSH vocabulary is organized
by 16 main branches:
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PubMed
 When PubMed searches
a MeSH term, it will
automatically include
narrower terms in the
search, if applicable.
This is also called
"automatic explosion”.
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PubMed
 NLM indexers
examine articles
and assign the
most specific MeSH
heading(s) (also
Subheadings) that
appropriately
describes the
concept(s)
discussed.
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PubMed
 In addition to assigning MeSH terms that
describe the topic of the article, the indexer
provides terms that reflect:
 Characteristics of the group being studied
(e.g., the age group, human or other animal,
male or female)
 The material represented (Publication Types)
e.g., Clinical Trials, Editorial, Review
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PubMed
 The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®), 1st
edition catalog is freely available online:
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https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/collections/digital/MeSH/pdfs/MeSH.pdf
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SEARCHING
PubMed
 Create your search strategy with:
 A predefined search strategy1
 Key concepts
 Alternative terms (if needed)
 Refine your search, as appropriate
 Practice
35
1 Kastner, M., Tricco, A. C., Soobiah, C., Lillie, E., Perrier, L., Horsley, T., … Straus, S. E. (2012). What is the most appropriate
knowledge synthesis method to conduct a review? Protocol for a scoping review. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 12, 114.
doi:10.1186/1471-2288-12-114
SPENDING TIME ELABORATING A SEARCH
STRATEGY IS A GOOD INVESTMENT
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“PARTIAL
MATCH” SEARCH
PubMed
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PubMed
 Automatic Term Mapping
 The phrases and individual terms are also
searched in All Fields
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PubMed
 You can see how your search was
translated by PubMed in the Search details
box.
 However, the Search Details box does NOT
show MeSH terms included by automatic
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PubMed
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PubMed
 Stopwords
(ignored words)
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PubMed
 Only filters valid for
your search results
will appear.
 Some Filters,
including many
publication types,
age groups,
species and sex,
restrict your search
to indexed records.
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PubMed
 DATE: PubMed will search both electronic
and print publication dates when range
searching.
 If using a single date, PubMed will search
only the earliest publication date (since
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PubMed
 JOURNALS
 Approximately forty languages
are indexed.
 Core Clinical Journals: 120
English language clinical
journals formerly published as
the Abridged Index Medicus
(AIM).
 MEDLINE: Limits to records
that are fully indexed. This
subset can also be used in a
search as medline [sb].
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PubMed
 AGE
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PubMed
 Search
Fields
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PubMed
 REMEMBER!
 Unless you remove these filters, or your
session times out, any search in PubMed will
be limited by applied filters.
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PubMed
 Records can display
Related citations,
which are computed
with an algorithm.
 See reviews to see the
review articles that are
related to this citation.
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BOOLEAN
SEARCH
PubMed
 The Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT can be
used to combine search terms in PubMed.
 In PubMed, Boolean operators must be entered
in UPPERCASE letters.
 When using multiple Boolean operators in
PubMed, they are processed left to right.
 You can also combine previous searches (using
Advanced Search).
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PubMed
 EXACT MATCH: PubMed automatically
searches for phrases during Automatic Term
Mapping.
 Enclosing the phrase in double quotes without
search tag indicates the search should be
conducted in All Fields.
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PubMed
 EXACT MATCH: You may also try:
 Entering the phrase with a search tag:
 Perceived weight [tw]
 Truncating
 Perceived weight*
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PubMed
 Truncation (*) turns off automatic term
mapping and the automatic explosion of
MeSH terms.
 Try your search with and without quotes,
hyphenation and truncation and compare
your results.
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PubMed
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MeSH
DATABASE
PubMed
 The MeSH Database allows you to:
 Locate and select MeSH terms, (Headings,
Subheadings, & Publication Types).
 See the definition and other helpful information for a
MeSH term.
 Build a PubMed search strategy.
 Display MeSH terms in the hierarchy.
 Limit MeSH terms to a major concept for a search.
 Attach subheadings for a search.
 Link to the NLM MeSH Section's MeSH Browser.
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PubMed
 MeSH heading: The summary may include a
definition of the concept.
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PubMed
 Subheadings and limiters are available.
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EXERCISE
PubMed
 Let's search for treatment failure in diet
therapy of obesity
1st step:
 Search treatment failure as MeSH term.
 Click Add to search builder
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PubMed
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PubMed
 Let's search for treatment failure in diet
therapy of obesity
2nd step:
 Search Obesity as MeSH term, click on it, and select
diet therapy subheading.
 Before add this term to the strategy, let's restrict to
citations where the major focus of the article is diet
therapy. So, keep selected the option: Restrict to
MeSH Major Topic.
 Click Add to search builder
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PubMed
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JOURNALS
PubMed
 JOURNALS
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PubMed
 JOURNALS:
 Search by title, abbreviation, ISSN, or topic.
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PubMed
 Searching Journals (autocomplete)
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PubMed
 Journal information
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PubMed
 Limiting your search into a specific journal
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PubMed
 JOURNALS:
 Browse by broad subject terms, or lists.
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PubMed
 JOURNALS:
 Browse by broad subject terms.
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PubMed
 JOURNALS:
 Browsing by broad subject terms: Psychology
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PubMed
 JOURNALS:
 You can add specific journals to your search.
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PubMed
 JOURNALS:
 Browse Journal lists by FTP (available for
download).
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CLINICAL
QUERIES
PubMed
 Clinical queries is part of PubMed Tools
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PubMed
 Clinical queries is available for specific clinical
research areas. 3 search filters are available
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PubMed
 Clinical Study
Categories is intended
for clinicians and has 2
filters: 5 study
categories and two
scope filters.
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PubMed
 Systematic Reviews: It
retrieves systematic
reviews, metaanalyses,
reviews of
clinical trials, evidencebased
medicine,
consensus
development
conferences, and
guidelines.
 Citations from journals
specializing in clinical
review studies are also
included.
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ADVANCED
SEARCH
PubMed
 Author, Journal and MeSH fields include an
autocomplete feature.
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PubMed
 To see and select from a list of all values in
the database in a specific field, use the
 In parentheses are the number of records
that include that term.
 You may select multiple values from a single
index by holding your <ctrl> key.
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PubMed
 Selecting terms from the Index List
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PubMed
 Use tags to specify fields.
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PubMed
 Use tags to specify fields.
 Uppercase, lowercase or combined are the
same.
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PubMed
 Using MeSH tags.
 MeSH Major Topic [MAJR]
 sleep[Majr]: automatically includes automatic explosion.
 sleep[majr:noexp]: turn off automatic explosion.
 MeSH Headings [MH]
 sleep[mh]: automatically includes automatic explosion.
 sleep[mh:noexp]: turn off automatic explosion.
 Remember: “In process”, “publisher supplied”,
and OldMedline citations are excluded (they
aren’t indexed).
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PubMed
 Using MeSH heading/subheading
combination.
 MeSH Major Topic [MAJR]
 Sleep/psychology[majr]
 Sleep/psychology[majr:noexp]
 MeSH Headings [MH]
 Obesity/prevention and control[mh]
 Obesity/prevention and control [mh:noexp]
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PubMed
 Using MeSH heading/subheading
combination.
 To search the subheading attached to any MeSH
heading ("free-floating"). Only one subheading at
one time
 obesity[mh] AND genetics[sh]
 obesity[mh] AND mortality[sh:noexp]
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PubMed
 Use the MeSH
subheadings and
abbreviations list:
depression[mh] AND PD[sh]
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PubMed
 A list of subheading
explosions is also
available.
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PubMed
 Using Text Words [TW] tag.
 Terms tagged will be searched in:
 Title
 Abstract
 MeSH headings and Subheadings (includes single
words and phrases)
 Other Terms field
 Chemical Names of Substances
 Secondary Source Identifier, which identifies a
secondary source that supplies information
 Personal Name as Subject
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PubMed
 Affiliation [AD] tag.
 The institutional affiliation (address) of the first author is
taken from the article.
 american[ad] AND psychological[ad] AND association[ad]
 Corporate Author [CN] tag.
 Search for corporate authorship of an article.
 american psychological association [cn]
 american [cn] AND psychological [cn] AND association [cn]
 american psychological association [cn] OR american
psychological association [ti]
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PubMed
 Place of Publication [PL] tag.
 This field indicates the cited journal's country of
publication.
 obesity AND czech republic [pl]
 Personal Name as Subject [PS] tag.
 Search citations about a named individual.
 smith j [ps]
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PubMed
 Grant Number [GR] tag.
 For Public Health Services agencies, the number
is followed by the Institute acronym; the agency’s
hierarchical structure from lower to higher entity,
when known; and by the country name.
 LM05545/LM/NLM NIH HHS/United States
 For other funding organizations, the number is
followed by the name of the organization; the
country name.
 066866/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom
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PubMed
 Secondary Source Identifier [SI] tag.
 Identifies a secondary source that supplies
information (e.g. ClinicalTrials.gov – beginning
in July 2005)
 obesity[mh] AND clinicaltrials.gov [si]
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PubMed
 CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
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QUESTIONS?
NEXT CLASS
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 READINGS:
Principles, standards, and guidelines that impact test
development (Leach, Stevens, Lindsay, Ferrero, & Korkut,
2012)
Concluding thoughts on the internationalization of test
reviews (Bartram, 2012)
Standards (American Educational Research Association,
American Psychological Association, & National Council on
Measurement in Education, 1999)
OPTIONAL: The internationalization of test reviewing
(Evers, 2012)