Medical Database Search

Article information

J Korean Med Assoc. 2010;53(8):668-686

Publication date (electronic) : 2010 July 30

doi : https://doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2010.53.8.668

Choon Shil Lee, PhD

Department of Library&Information Science, Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea.

Corresponding author: Choon Shil Lee. cslee@sookmyung.ac.kr

Received 2010 July 07; Accepted 2010 July 21.

Abstract

It is essential to search medical information precisely and efficiently in every aspect of medical practices and research activities. The growth of the medical literature has been tremendous in recent years, as exemplified by the annual growth of 710,000 records in MEDLINE in 2009, thus increasing the complexities of literature searching. Yet database search environments are changing toward very user-friendly ways facilitated by various hypertext linking capabilities such as "LinkOuts" to full texts and "reference linkings" among articles using Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). Once a direct search of a keyword is initiated, a searcher can continue searching endlessly and seamlessly by simply clicking various links provided in the records retrieved. Search behaviors of researchers are changing accordingly, avoiding any complex or advanced searches. The basics of database search methods are described in this paper. A brief overview of major medical databases is given by database type to illustrate the differences in the information retrievable from such databases: MEDLINE/PubMed and KoreaMed are abstract databases; SCI/Web of Science, SCOPUS and KoMCI are citation indexes; and PubMed Central and Synapse are full text databases. Some of the advanced search features of each database are also noted: searches using MeSH terms in PubMed and KoreaMed; differences in the "related documents" algorithms of PubMed and SCI; citation analysis using "analyze results" in Web of Science and SCOPUS; and citation tracking in Synapse and PubMed. The Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) records are used for the illustration of such features.

Keywords: Google; Google Scholar; KoreaMed; PubMed; PubMed Central; SCI; SCOPUS; Synapse

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Appendices

Appendix

Databases and web sites mentioned

CrossRef. http://crossref.org

DOI. http://doi.org

Entrez databases. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Entrez/

Google. http://google.com

Google Scholar. http://scholar.google.com

Journal of Korean Medical Science. http://jkms.org

Journal of the Korean Medical Association. http://jkma.org

Journals. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/journals

KoMCI, KoMCI Web, KoMCI Journal Web. http://komci.org

Korean Medical Journal Information. http://journals.koreamed.org

KoreaMed. http://koreamed.org

KoreaMed Synapse. http://synapse.koreamed.org

Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors. http://kamje.org

MeSH Browser. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html

Nature. http://nature.com

PubMed. http://pubmed.gov

PubMed Central. http://pubmedcentral.gov

Science. http://sciencemag.org

SCOPUS. http://scopus.com

SpringerLink. http://springerlink.com

Web of Science. http://isiknowledge.com

Wiley InterScience. http://interscience.wiley.com

Article information Continued

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Figure 1

A full text record of the Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) with "cited by" and "reference linking" features, available at http://jkma.org. The screen shots are captured from a smart phone: a JKMA record with a banner indicating the record is cited by articles in Synapse/CrossRef databases (A); a pop-up record showing the articles citing the JKMA article (B); the references cited in the JKMA article with the reference linking icons to various abstract and full text databases (C); a "Download Citation" pop-up window displaying the citation information of the article and export options to reference management software (D).

Figure 2

Major medical databases by database type. Abstract database covers full bibliographic information and abstract of an article (A); citation index database covers full bibliographic information, abstract and references cited in an article (A)+(C); full text database covers from top to bottom of an article (F).

Figure 3

Seamless searching with/without log-in barrier. Straight lines indicate the linkings (LinkOuts) from the major medical databases to the full text of articles in the journal web sites, full text databases, and digital archives. Dotted lines with arrows on both sides indicate that the articles are linked by the reference linking feature via Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Free access or Open Access journals can be viewed without log-in barrier, whereas access to subscription-based journals are allowed only to those who have log-in privileges.

Figure 4

A PubMed record of the Journal of Korean Medical Science with various links: full text LinkOut icons to the journal web site and PubMed Central, Publication Types, MeSH terms, Substances, other LinkOut Resources such as PubMed Central Canada, UK PubMed Central, Related Citations, References for this PMC article, and Cited by PMC articles.

Figure 5

A KoreaMed record of the Journal of Korean Medical Science with various links: full text LinkOut icons to the journal web site and Synapse, Cited by Synapse/CrossRef articles, Publication Types, MeSH terms, Author Keywords, Journal title, and DOI.

Figure 6

KoreaMed "Limit" interface and the search results: limited to Clinical Trial, Humans and Male ("Clinical Trial" [PT]) AND ("Humans" [MH]) AND ("Male" [MH]).

Figure 7

Cited articles of the Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) can be searched in the Synapse Advanced Search mode by checking "Articles Cited by Synapse/CrossRef Articles" option (A); the search results are sorted by the "Times Cited" by the Synapse/CrossRef articles (B); full text of the JKMA article with a banner displaying the no. of times cited by Synapse/CrossRef articles (C); by checking the banner in (C) or Times Cited icon in (B), the citation information of articles citing the JKMA article can be viewed (D). Searchers can directly access to the citing articles by clicking Synapse or CrossRef icons listed under each citation.

Figure 8

A Web of Science search results showing 320 articles of the Journal of the Korean Medical Association are currently indexed in the database. The right-hand side of the record displays the most cited articles in the rank order. The left-hand side shows analyzed results of the article set by Document Type, Publication Year, Language, etc. (Searched and sorted by "Cited by" on July 5th, 2010.)

Figure 9

Web of Science (SCI) records of a Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) article with links (S); to the articles cited in the references of the article (C); to SCI articles citing the JKMA article (T); and to the SCI articles that are related by sharing common references (R).

Figure 10

A SCOPUS search results record showing 855 articles of the Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) are currently indexed in the database. The bottom part of the record displays the most cited JKMA article. (Searched and sorted by "Cited by" on July 5th, 2010.)

Figure 11

Google and Google Scholar search results of a Korean journal article. Google search shows the article is available at three locations: KoreaMed, Synapse, and the journal web site (A). Google Scholar search shows the article is available in 2 versions (B): at the journal web site and Synapse (C).

Table 1

Database coverage of major medical databases

^a)It is to be noted that many journals are covered for the years prior to the period designated.

^b)No. of Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) member journals.

^c)Includes 14 MEDLINE journals.

Abbreviations; A: Abstract, F: Full text, C: Citation index, M: Medicine, S: Science, K: Korea, W: Worldwide, E: English