Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The regular update is an important quality criterion for Cochrane reviews. Essential to this process is the retrieval of all relevant records. The term in process citation is added to the title field of new records that will be added to MEDLINE. In OVID these records are in PREMEDLINE and contain data such as author, original title, and source. These records contain abstracts if available in English only. When other data such as MeSH headings, publication types, comments, errata/retractions and English translations of foreign titles are added, these records are entered into MEDLINE. Mid May 2004 PREMEDLINE contained 7249 records. Fifty-four percent of these records had no abstract. Records without an English title or abstract cannot be retrieved using English search terms when searching PREMEDLINE. Furthermore 59.9% of these records were published before 2004. Therefore it may be important, when updating searches for reviews or specialised registers, to use the field Entry Date rather than the publication year, to retrieve any records which were not indexed at the time of the last search. The Entry Date field contains the date on which the document was indexed as a completed MEDLINE record.
Objectives: To assess the impact of in process citations on search strategies for updating reviews or specialised registers.
Methods: All search strategies will be rerun in MEDLINE (OVID) for four reviews which require an update. The searches will use the entry date rather than the publication year to cover the entire period since the last search date to the present. Records retrieved from these searches will be checked to determine if there are any records which may have been missed if the search was run only from the last search date to the present. All additional records retrieved will be screened to decide whether they are relevant for the review topic.
Results: The primary search of MEDLINE for the first review, run in August 2001 retrieved 1393 records published between 1966 and 2001. When running the update search in May 2004 on MEDLINE and PREMEDLINE we retrieved 19 records all published in 2001. These would have been missed using the publication year for limiting the search. All 19 records appeared to be of relevance for the review topic. The process of screening the additional references for the other three reviews are still ongoing and will be finished by mid June 2004.
Conclusions: The term in process citation is added to the title field of non-indexed records in PREMEDLINE containing data such as author, original title and source. Non-English records without abstracts cannot be retrieved when searching PREMEDLINE. Therefore, it seems to be essential when updating searches for reviews or specialised registers, to use the entry date field to search the time period from the last search date to the present to retrieve any records which were not indexed at the time of the last search. However, even though experienced information scientists might be aware of this problem, reviewers and others should be informed about this possible pitfall.
Objectives: To assess the impact of in process citations on search strategies for updating reviews or specialised registers.
Methods: All search strategies will be rerun in MEDLINE (OVID) for four reviews which require an update. The searches will use the entry date rather than the publication year to cover the entire period since the last search date to the present. Records retrieved from these searches will be checked to determine if there are any records which may have been missed if the search was run only from the last search date to the present. All additional records retrieved will be screened to decide whether they are relevant for the review topic.
Results: The primary search of MEDLINE for the first review, run in August 2001 retrieved 1393 records published between 1966 and 2001. When running the update search in May 2004 on MEDLINE and PREMEDLINE we retrieved 19 records all published in 2001. These would have been missed using the publication year for limiting the search. All 19 records appeared to be of relevance for the review topic. The process of screening the additional references for the other three reviews are still ongoing and will be finished by mid June 2004.
Conclusions: The term in process citation is added to the title field of non-indexed records in PREMEDLINE containing data such as author, original title and source. Non-English records without abstracts cannot be retrieved when searching PREMEDLINE. Therefore, it seems to be essential when updating searches for reviews or specialised registers, to use the entry date field to search the time period from the last search date to the present to retrieve any records which were not indexed at the time of the last search. However, even though experienced information scientists might be aware of this problem, reviewers and others should be informed about this possible pitfall.