We want to hear from you! User feedback is invaluable as we continue to refine the guide!
This Library Guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Generic License.
| automatic mapping | See MAPPING. |
|---|---|
| background question | Asks for general knowledge about a condition, test, or treatment. |
| bibliographic database | Contains descriptions (citations or references) to published or unpublished literature. Individual database records may have added elements such as subject headings or annotations attached to the descriptions. See DATABASE. |
| bibliographic record | A description of an item of recorded information, which includes all the data necessary to uniquely identify it. |
| Boolean operators | Named after George Boole, a British mathematician, who expressed the relationships between sets (or groups) of things or ideas using specific connectors (i.e., AND, OR, and NOT) |
| building blocks | The parts, parameters, or facets of a search that are combined to create a search strategy. A single search statement can be a building block. |
| case-control study | Patients with a particular disease or condition (cases) are identified and "matched" with controls (patients with some other disease, the general population, etc.). Data are collected on past exposure to a possible causal agent for the disease. See OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH. |
| case report | Describes the medical history of a single patient. See OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH. |
| case-series report | Describes the medical histories of more than one patient. See OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH. |
| cohort study | Two (or more) groups of people are selected on the basis of differences in their exposure to a particular agent (such as a vaccine, drug, or environmental toxin) and followed to see how many in each group develop a particular disease or outcome. See OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH. |
| concept | The idea of a thing. |
| connectors | Words, phrases, or symbols used to combine search statements, thoughts, or ideas. See BOOLEAN OPERATORS and PROXIMITY OPERATORS. |
| controlled vocabulary | A list of predefined terms or dictionary, usually used with databases, to describe the subject matter of database contents. It is controlled because someone organizes it and only words on that list may be assigned to the contents. See SUBJECT HEADINGS and THESAURUS. |
| cross-sectional study | Data are collected at a single point in time and analyzed. See OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH. |
| database | A file of information. Although databases are usually thought of as being electronic or machine-readable, they may also be in only printed format. A published textbook or dictionary is technically a database. See BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE. |
| database contents | The information contained within the database. Individual portions of the contents are referred to as database or unit records. |
| database interface | See SEARCH INTERFACE. |
| database structure | The arrangement of the database contents or records. |
| descriptors | See SUBHEADINGS. |
| Emtree | The controlled vocabulary of Embase. |
| evidence-based practice | Health care provided on the basis of the integration of the practitioner's expertise with findings from scientifically sound relevant research and the patient's values to make the best clinical decisions. The phrase "evidence-based" may be applied to many disciplines, e.g., evidence-based nursing, evidence-based medicine, etc. |
| experimental research | Involves the study of an intervention(s)/exposure(s)/factor(s) that is controlled by the researcher. The research may or may involve randomization of the intervention(s)/exposure(s)/factor(s). |
| explode | To expand a subject search by using all of the related vocabulary words. Depending on the search interface, it can be done automatically by the search interface or on request by the searcher. |
| field | The part of the record for a specific type of information. For example: author field, title field, source field, etc. |
| filters | Database criterion/criteria applied to search results to limit or identify specific aspects of a search, e.g., year published. See HEDGES and LIMITS. |
| focus | To narrow a subject search where the selected subject heading is considered the major topic. |
| foreground question | Can be answered from research/evidence and focuses on specific knowledge. |
| grey (or gray) literature | Information or materials that are not published or indexed in the traditional pipeline of databases, indexes, peer-reviewed journals, and monographs, including such items as internal company reports, speeches, and posters presented at meetings. |
| hedges | Sets of related words (natural language, subject descriptors, or both) describing a concept and used as one of the search's building blocks or as a filter for the search results. See FILTERS and LIMITS. |
| index term | See CONTROLLED VOCABULARY, SUBJECT HEADINGS, and THESAURUS. |
| keyword | Individual word searchable in any field of a record. See NATURAL LANGUAGE. |
| limits | Sets of parameters, often predesignated by the search interface, used to filter or restrict the retrieval to a specific subset (e.g., year or publication type) of the entire database. See FILTERS and HEDGES. |
| literature search | Examination or searching (by hand or online) of bibliographic databases. Often used interchangeably with the phrases "database search" or "online search." A literature search also refers the search results or list of references produced by the search process. |
| mapping | The process of translating words entered by the searcher into the controlled vocabulary of the database. Mapping may occur automatically (i.e., the interface always carries out this process when a term is entered, or by having the searcher check a box or select from a list). |
| mediated searching | Online searching performed by one person, usually an expert searcher, for someone else (the end user). |
| MeSH | Medical Subject Headings, the controlled vocabulary used by the National Library of Medicine. |
| meta-analysis | A type of review article that synthesizes the research results from a number of relevant articles by use of specific statistical methods. Meta-analysis is also the process of synthesizing this research. |
| natural language | Author's or searcher's words, not necessarily thesaurus or vocabulary terms. The words that the researcher might use in conversation or writing. See KEWORD. |
| NLM | The National Library of Medicine. |
| observational research | Can be used to describe many study designs that are not randomized trials and may or may not have a comparison or control group (i.e., cohort studies or case-control studies that have a goal of establishing causation, studies of prognosis, studies of diagnostics tests and qualitative studies.) |
| order of precedence | The order in which connectors are acted on when entered into a search interface. |
| pearl‑growing search method | The search technique in which a single reference (the pearl) is used as a starting point to identify additional search terms and references. |
| PICO | A mnemonic identifying the key elements of a clinical research question in which P stands for patient (or population or problem), I for intervention, C for comparison, and O for outcome. |
| positional operators | See PROXIMITY OPERATORS. |
| precision | The proportion of citations in a given search that are relevant to the search question. Precision indicates the specificity of the search. |
| primary sources | The original studies. See SECONDARY SOURCES and TERTIARY SOURCES. |
| proximity operators | Words, phrases, or symbols used to indicate how closely two or more search terms are physically placed in a database record. |
| qualifiers | The act of specifying that a term entered be searched in a specific search field, often through use of characters and punctuation. See SEARCH FIELDS and SEARCH TAGS. |
| qualitative question | Seek to discover, describe, and understand rather than test or evaluate. |
| quantitative question | Seek to discover cause-and-effect relationships by comparing two or more individuals or groups based on different outcomes related to exposures or interventions. |
| qualitative research | Looks at particular issues in a broad, open-ended way to generate (or modify) hypotheses and prioritize areas to investigate. |
| quantitative research | Begins with an idea/hypothesis that through measurement generates data and allows a conclusion to be drawn. |
| recall | The proportion of relevant citations in a given search relative to the total number of relevant citations. Recall indicates the sensitivity of the search. |
| record | A complete description of one document in a database. |
| scientific literature | Refers to theoretical and research publications in scientific journals, reference books, textbooks, government reports, policy statements, and other materials about the theory, practice, and results of scientific inquiry. |
| scope note | Definition of subject heading. |
| search component | One part of search request, usually a subject or concept but can also be a year, publication type, etc. |
| search fields | Access points or elements of the database record often designated by two letter codes (e.g., "au" for "author") that can be used for retrieval. |
| search interface | The framework or programming that allows one to search a database. |
| search plan | See SEARCH STRATEGY. |
| search results | The information or list of citations retrieved from a database search. Expert searchers often create additional materials such as cover letters to accompany search results. |
| search steps | The individual search statements that make up the search strategy. Also called search sets. |
| search strategy | The overall plan or approach to a database search consisting of one or more steps used to retrieve desired results. See SEARCH PLAN. |
| search tags | See QUALIFIERS and SEARCH FIELDS. |
| secondary sources | Summarize and draw conclusions from primary studies and include reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, guidelines. See PRIMARY SOURCES, TERTIARY SOURCES. |
| sensitivity | See RECALL. |
| specificity | See PRECISION. |
| stop words | Commonly occurring words that cannot be used in a search statement. Often the database interface provides a specific list of stop words and, sometimes, a means of designating them as search terms. |
| subheadings | Used with subject headings to retrieve frequently discussed aspect of the subject heading. |
| subject headings | A list of designated words or phrases used to describe the subject content of items in a database. Subject headings (or indexing terms) can be assigned by indexers or artificial intelligence. See CONTROLLED VOCABULARY and THESAURUS. |
| subject specialist | In the context of responsible literature searching, the subject specialist is the faculty, researcher, or clinician. |
| systematic reviews | Methodical literature searches covering a large amount of material. |
| tertiary sources | Provide distillation and information consolidation from primary and secondary information sources and include textbooks, information databases (UpToDate), and official publications. |
| thesaurus | An alphabetical listing of subject headings that comprise the controlled vocabulary for a particular database. See CONTROLLED VOCABULARY and SUBJECT HEADINGS. |
| truncation | A search technique that allows for variant spellings and word endings through the use of a special symbol. Truncation returns multiple spelling variations of a word root from the point of the truncation symbol. See WILDCARD. |
| unit record | The set of fields or elements that describe an individual item in the database. Some data elements may be searchable and others may not. |
| wildcards | Specific punctuation marks or other symbols allow the searcher to replace one or more characters in a search term or between search terms. See TRUNCATION. |
(Greenhalgh, 2001; Guyatt, 2015; Jankowski, 2008; McKibbon & Walker-Dilks, 1995; Walker & Janes, 1999; Wessel, 2019)
Greenhalgh, T. (2001). How to read a paper: the basics of evidence based medicine (Second ed. ed.). London: BMJ.
Guyatt, G., Drummond, R., Meade, M.O., Cook, D.J. (2015). Users' guides to the medical literature : a manual for evidence-based clinical practice (3rd ed. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Jankowski, T. A. (2008). The Medical Library Association Essential Guide to Becoming an Expert Searcher: Proven Techniques, Strategies, and Tips for Finding Health Information. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
McKibbon, K. A., & Walker-Dilks, C. J. (1995). The quality and impact of MEDLINE searches performed by end users. Health Libr Rev, 12(3), 191-200. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2532.1995.1230191.x
Walker, G., & Janes, J. (1999). Online Retrieval. A Dialogue of Theory and Practice (Second ed.). Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited.
Wessel, C. B. (2019). Responsible Literature Searching for Research: A Self-Paced Interactive Program. Retrieved from https://cme.hs.pitt.edu/ISER/app/learner/loadModule?moduleId=8381&dev=false