DWLresearch

  When you're doing a literature search there may be lots of variations of words you want to search on, to ensure you're finding all the different ways someone may have written about a topic. Truncation searching and using wildcards helps you to search for word variations without having to type in every single variations yourself. These techniques only work in specialist literature databases that support truncation or wildcards. Search engines such as Google and Google Scholar do not support these options. Some databases do automatically look for variations in spellings and the singular/plural of words, but you can ensure they are doing this by using the tips below: Truncation Searching If you want to search on the plural, singular and other variations of the same word you can use truncation: exercise* = will find exercise, exercises, exercising, exercised Do not truncate too early in a word – e.g. exer* = would find the above but also exercycle, exergonic, exertion, and other ...

Phrase searching Normally when you put two words into a database search it will find those two words anywhere in the title/abstract/keywords: It will do an AND search = diabetes AND mellitus If you want to force the database to do a phrase search then enclose it in “speech marks” “diabetes mellitus” = those words next to each other, in that order Most of the main literature databases we subscribe to at the University of Leicester support phrase searching using speech marks, as do the search engines Google and Google Scholar. However, Scopus treats phrases in "speech marks" as loose phrases, so to do an exact phrase search in Scopus use {curly brackets} around the phrase instead. Extra Tip: Make sure when typing in speech marks that you use the double speech mark symbol " rather than typing in two apostrophes. Proximity (Adjacency) Searching Finds one keyword within a specified number of words of the other, in any order: Diabetes ADJ4 “Type 2” = will find Diabetes withi...

PubMed recently introduced a new search interface. It's pretty similar to the old interface, so should be fairly simple to pick up. If you'd like more information and tutorials on the new interface then take a look at the PubMed Online Training Page . Below are a few tips you might find useful. How does PubMed do a keyword search? Even if you use PubMed a lot you may not realise how it is searching, as it automatically adds keyword variations and maps your keywords to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). If you want to see exactly what search PubMed has conducted, based on the words you typed in, then you can now do this under the Advanced Search option.  Conduct your search: This will take you directly to the results page: From the results page click on the ADVANCED option just under the search box. Once on the Advanced page scroll down to your search history and click on the Details Arrow: Now you can see exactly what PubMed searched on when inputt...

Proximity (Adjacency) Searching vs Phrase Searching When you're searching literature databases you might want to find a phrase. The easiest way to do this is to put the phrase in "speech marks". E.g. "heart disease" This will find that exact phrase - with the words next to each other in that order. BUT... You may be interested in variations on that phrase e.g. heart disease, disease of the heart, diseases of the heart, diseases of the human heart. In that case it might be better to use a proximity/adjacency search - this allows you to find one keyword next to another. Or one keyword within a specified number of words of the other keyword. When using a proximity search the keywords can be in any order. Different Databases Use Different Proximity Operators In Ovid Medline : heart adj disease finds the word heart next to the word disease, in that order.    (This is the same as searching for the phrase, of course) heart adj2 disease fin...