Psychology: Ovid Medline Help
Ovid Medline
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Last updated January 23, 2017
Ovid Medline uses the same data as PubMed, but has a different search engine. Of course it uses standard Boolean logic, but field codes are different, and there are additional features, such as adjacency searching and multiple wildcard options, which you may sometimes find useful.
Adjacency Searching
ADJn
This will find records that contain search terms within a specified number (n) of words from each other in either direction.
To use the adjacency operator, separate your search terms with ADJ and a number from 1 to 99.
Example:
physician adj5 relationship finds records that contain the two words within five words of each other in either direction.
This particular search retrieves records containing such phrases as
physician patient relationship,
patient physician relationship, or
relationship of the physician to the patient.
Stopwords
Many databases have lists of stopwords, or words which the databases will not search. At customer request Stopwords have been eliminated from Ovid Medline. You can now search for words or phrases like hope not forthcoming.tw. Previously such searches would have returned an error because they included stopwords.
Wildcard Options Available in Ovid Medline
1. Ovid Medline allows words within phrases to be truncated, whereas PubMed allows truncation only of single independent words, or of words at the end of a phrase.
Example:-
clinician* asses* is searchable as a phrase in Ovid Medline
PubMed would not allow truncation of clinician - the first word of the phrase
2. # A hash replaces a single character anywhere in a word. It doesn't allow for the absence of a character.
Example:
ne#t would find all citations containing neat, nest or next. Ovid would not find net because the wildcard replaces a single character. Use one hash for each character you want to replace.
3. ? A question mark can substitute for a single character, or the absence of a character, and can be very useful in allowing for variations in British and American spelling of words.
Example:
colo?r retrieves results that contain the words color or colour. You can use multiple wild cards in a single query word.
4. There is an extra option for truncation of a word.
$ A dollar sign can be used only at the end of a word, and allows for all possible endings To use truncation, enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with a dollar sign. Ovid will find all available forms of that word. You can also use an asterisk * but this won't allow you to specify a maximum number of letters following it.
Example:
behav$ finds behave, behavior, behaviour, behavioral, behavioural, behaviorism etc.
$n A dollar sign plus a number allows you to specify the maximum number of characters that may follow the root word or phrase.
Example:
dog$1 finds dog or dogs, but not dogma, which has more than one character after the truncation.
Ovid Medline Field Codes
Below is a list of field names you're most likely to use. A complete list of Fields is available from Ovid.
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Examples |
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.SH to search for MeSH terms
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obesity.sh This search will include ONLY the term Obesity, NOT the more specific terms in the list below it |
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EXP - explode This will search a MeSH term PLUS the more specific categories in the indented list below it. Use EXP before the term.
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exp economics They will search Economics, PLUS all of the more specific terms in the indented list below it.
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To restrict a search to Major Medical Subject Headings only, use an asterisk before the term. Note:- When used at the beginning of a MeSH an asterisk does NOT behave as a wildcard
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*obesity Single term search for a Major MeSH exp *obesity Exploded term search for a Major MeSH
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.FS - "free float" subheadings. This will allow independent searching of subheadings without attaching them to a specific MeSH |
epidemiology.fs This search would find the subheading “epidemiology” attached to any MeSH term |
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.TI - titles This will search for words in titles of articles |
obesity.ti This search would find the word only in titles of articles |
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.AB - abstracts This will search for words in abstracts - abstracts This will search for words in abstracts |
obesity.ab This search would find the word only in abstracts of articles |
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.TW - text word This will search for words in titles and abstracts Note: This is NOT the equivalent of [tw] text word searching in PubMed, which includes many additional fields.
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obesity.tw This search would find the word in BOTH titles and abstracts of articles |
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.MP - multiple field search. This includes title, abstract, original title, name of substance word, subject heading word, keyword heading word (this refers to authors' keywords), protocol supplementary concept word, rare disease supplementary concept word, unique identifier Note: There is no exact equivalent in PubMed. PubMed's broadest search is [all] where terms are processed using Automatic Term Mapping. Terms that do not map are searched in all search fields except for Place of Publication and Transliterated Title.
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obesity.mp |
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NJ - journal title. This will allow you to search for a specific journal, but you need to know the full title |
American Journal of Bioethics.nj
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