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How to find literature about any veterinary topic for your EBCR or thesis: WHERE & HOW? Search strategy

Developed as a Tutorial in the 'Summer School 2019' - bridging programme for Utrecht Master's programme for Farm Animal and Veterinary Public Health

Develop a SEARCH STRATEGY

STEP 3  Be aware of various SEARCH METHODS  

References search

  

Citation search

  

Related item search

  

Systematic search

Looking backward:

You search on the basis of a SUITABLE ARTICLE you have found earlier. Most common is checking the REFERENCE LIST of the article.

You can also look for other articles by the same author, or search by keywords that you have found in that article.

This searching for references goes back in time to older publications.

 

Looking forward:

You search on the basis of a SUITABLE ARTICLE by checking newer CITATIONS: has it been cited by others? And if so, you have a look at these newer articles and find out again of they have been cited in their turn etc.

This method goes forward in time to newer articles.

Please take into account that a recent article may not at all has been cited yet, or not very frequently.

Looking nearby:

You search on the basis of a SUITABLE ARTICLE by checking the articles that pop up as RELATED in the Search system.

With this method you will find older and newer articles

with similar words in either title, abstract or keywords.

Looking around further away:

You search on the basis of your SEARCH PROFILE with the intention of finding as much literature as possible on that subject.

You may apply various search techniques, such as BOOLEAN COMBINING of search terms, TRUNCATIONS, using THESAURUSES, setting FILTERS & LIMITS.

With this method you are performing a 360° search: you will find both historical ánd actual publications.

How to perform a systematic search is described in detail in STEP 5

STEP 4 Choose SEARCH ENGINES 

Why use more then one search engine?

  

Most relevant for animal sciences

  

Where to start?

Many scientific search engines exist. These can be divided into either discipline-specific or general search engines, based on their coverage.

There is considerable overlap in the coverage of many search engines, but all of them have unique resources

 

So, even if you enter the same search question, the results in various search engines will differ because of:

 

Coverage:

WHAT material is included?

 

Indexing depth:

HOW can you search?

Think of:

  • Discipline(s)
  • Years
  • Languages
  • Publication types (journals, books websites?)
  • Format (including publications that doesn't exist online, or not?)

Think of:

  • Only Title, Authors name
  • Keywords added by the author
  • Abstracts/Summaries
  • Subject Headings (extra keywords, added by the makers of the database)

Smartness:

TREATMENT of you search terms

  

Output ranking:

ORDER of the results

Think of automatic inclusion of:

  • Strongly resembling terms
  • Related terms
  • Terms with slightly different endings

How are terms put between inverted commas ( "exact phrase") interpreted

Is this by:

  • Year (most recent or oldest first)
  • Number of citations
  • Popularity (often viewed sources on top)
  • Frequency of the terms (sources with all terms in many fields on top)

For Veterinary Medicine, Animal Production, or related subjects, the most relevant search engines are:

 
SEARCH ENGINE  (DIS-)ADVANTAGES

Biomedical sciences, with focus on Human Health & Medicine

You search in MEDLINE, the database of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM)
  • User-friendly
  • 'Automatic Term Mapping' = translation of general language terms into scientific descriptions (MeSH= Medical Subject Headings)
  • 'Search details' show how PubMed has treated the terms that you entered

CAB Abstracts

Animal & Agricultural Sciences 

You search in the database of CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International)
  • Best coverage of the literature in both Veterinary Medicine and Animal Production
  • Targeted Search with Thesaurus via [Advanced Search >  'Map Term to Subject Headings']

Life Sciences, Social Sciences

You search in a large range of scientific database  simultaneously
  • Cross discipline searching
  • Easy tracking of newer related publications via 'Cited by'

All disciplines

You search only for online available sources

You will not find publications that are not online (e.g. non-digitized back-issues; historical reports,

 
  • Large coverage
  • Sorted by relevance

but:

  • Access not guaranteed: all stuff found dóes exist somewhere online, but you may not have access
  • No easy filtering,  nor boolean searching with AND of OR

 

This depends on your starting point, your subject ánd the requested completeness of your search 

 

Do you need just a few, most actual publications?

Just give it a try with

the most appropriate terms from

your SEARCH PROFILE

Use Google scholar if you just want online available articles

E.g. if  you haven't time to request and/or wait for a scan of printed-only publications

Use PubMed or Scopus or WoS if you might also be interested in printed publications which are not (yet) online.

You can request a scan by the library.
 

Do you already have an important publication?
Find related articles by 'References search' or 'Citation search'

Start with Scopus or Web of Science to get an overview of the topic  

Open the publication

- Find older articles used by the authors ('snowballing'-method)

- Find newer articles that cite this one ('citation-search'-method)
 

 

Do you want to get a complete overview?

And/or you are not sure about your Search terms?

Perform a 'Systematic search'

Start with PubMed if your subject is more or less general biomedical;

PubMed suggests search terms based on its Medical Subject Headings

Start with Cab Abstracts for specific Animal Production or Veterinary Medicine topics;

CAB Abstracts offers a thesaurus with specific veterinary Subject Headings