Welcome to Session One!
The goal of this session is to explore the different elements of systematic searching in comparison to less standardized searching. Important note: non-systematic searching is not wrong! There are plenty of instances where a quick, simple search is the ideal method. But for an advanced approach, it's important to employ new strategies for comprehensive search results.
| Non-Systematic Search | Systematic Search |
| Organic, meandering, ends when you've found "enough" | Structured, planned searches that conclude only when all available literature on the topic has been found |
| One or two databases, chosen without rigor or planning, priority on convenience of search | Uses as many databases as are available and relevant for the search topic |
| Search terms are simple and not necessarily identical across multiple databases | Search terms are exhaustive, ideally accounting for all ways a topic may be described. When using multiple databases, the systematic search is translated as identically as possible. |
Controlled vocabularies are a set of premade terms that describe specific concepts. Many databases create their own thesaurus of controlled vocabulary terms; this includes Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in PubMed and Emtree in Embase, to name a few.
Controlled vocabularies are created by subject experts that review citations as they are added to the database, then they map controlled vocabulary terms that describe all of the concepts covered in the article. Think of them almost like #hashtags: using a hashtag is a way to connect your information to an index of conversations happening around the same topic. That's how controlled vocabulary works!
Keywords, also called "entry terms", are the natural language you use when searching browsers ("brunch spots near me", etc.) When using keywords in research databases, you're asking for hits on a term used in any field of a record: title, abstract, journal title, author name...) This has pros and cons. A pro of this kind of searching include capturing every time a term appears in the database, not just the time a subject expert assigned a controlled vocabulary term. However, this also means you need to consider all the way an author might describe your topic, including multiple spellings, singulars/plurals, and any synonyms.
Keyword searching is also useful when attempting to identify literature that may not have been indexed with controlled vocabulary terms; for example, there can be a backlog of records not yet assigned MeSH terms. If you're only using MeSH terms, you can miss the most recent literature!
It's recommended to combine controlled vocabulary and keywords for the most thorough search. Here's why!
To ensure your search is covering all your bases, use both controlled vocabulary terms AND keywords!
In the Term harvesting tab of your spreadsheet, complete each concept with appropriate MeSH Terms and keywords. Below you'll see walkthrough steps for finding MeSH and keywords, as well as nesting them together. If you need extra help in the nesting/search string construction, scroll to the bottom of this page for some essential tips for searching databases.
Remember that there are examples in the final tab of your spreadsheet!
