Finding search keywords from articles
Finding search keywords from articles
As a student (bachelor, master, PhD student), one should always ask their supervisor if they have any relevant articles for the project. Whether these references are old or new is of little importance. What one can use these articles for is to look them up in relevant databases and see how they are indexed. That is, check which controlled search keywords they are indexed with.
Example: Different controlled search keywords in various databases
Your project involves studying how working with vibrating tools can affect health. Your supervisor has the following relevant reference:
Work disability after diagnosis of hand-arm vibration syndrome. Riitta Sauni, Pauliina Toivio, Rauno Pääkkönen, Jari Malmström, Jukka Uitti. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2015 Nov;88(8):1061-8. doi: 10.1007/s00420-015-1034-1. Epub 2015 Feb 21
PubMed
By looking up this reference in PubMed, you get the following information:
In this window, you click on the MeSH term (controlled vocabulary in PubMed). You will then get an overview of all the controlled search keywords (MeSH Terms - ‘Subject Headings’) with which this article is indexed:
Here you will find many relevant controlled search keywords, which can be used in your own search setup for the project.
Ovid Medline
If we look up the same reference in Ovid Medline's ‘Advanced’ search window, with ‘Title’ marked, we see the following screen:
We then click on ‘Complete Reference’, to the right of the title and get the following information about which controlled search keywords (MeSH - ‘Subject Headings’) this article is indexed with in Medline:
Note that here you also get an overview of which keywords the authors of this article have placed on it, so that it appears in relevant searches (‘Keyword Heading’).
Ovid Embase
If we look up the same article in Ovid Embase, by using the same procedure as in Ovid Medline, we get the following information about how it is indexed using the controlled vocabulary of Embase (‘Emtree’-index):
From these examples, you can see that it can be very useful to look up relevant articles in different databases. They can provide invaluable help to get started with the search setup for the upcoming project.
