HINARI/E-Resources and Internet Searching

(module 1.2)

MODULE 1.2 E-Resources and Internet Searching

Instructions - This part of the:

course is a PowerPoint demonstration intended to introduce you to E-Resources and Internet Searching.

module is off-line and is intended as an information resource for reference use.

Table of Contents

E-resources Use of E-resources Types of Information Gateways, Databases and Search Engines

Searching techniques and strategies Boolean searching Advanced searching

Why Use E-Resources?

• An up-to-date resource

• Convenience

• Extra features—e.g. search facilities, links to other databases, supplementary information

• Access to a wider range of material than might otherwise be available within the local medical library

Electronic Library Resources

• Any library or information resources that can be accessed electronically, e.g.– electronic journals– scholarly databases– electronic books– hybrid digital collections– Internet gateways and search engines

• Free or fee-based access

Electronic Journal Formats

• Full-text/whole journal available– Electronic version of print– Electronic only

• Partial full-text/selected articles only• Table of contents/citations/abstracts only• Citations only

Source of the previous three slides is the INASP Training materials on Electronic Library Resources http://www.inasp.info/training/ejournals/

Open Access Journals

• ‘Open Access’ (OA) journals are scholarly journals that are available without financial or technical barriers other than Internet access

• Articles either are directly accessible from the publisher (e.g. PLOS) or archived in a repository (e.g. PubMed Central)

• In most cases, the copyright is owned by the author, not the publisher

• Some OA journals are subsidized by academic or governmental institutions

OA Journal Options• ‘Fee-based OA journals’ require payment by the author

- often paid by a grant or institution; access is free to all users

– these OA journals accept articles from authors in low-income countries; the number varies from journal to journal; peer-reviewers (theoretically) do not know if authors have requested fee waivers

• ‘Delayed open access journals’ where the articles are available between 6 – 24 months

• ‘Hybrid open access journals’ contain some current articles that are free access

Types of Electronic Journals

• Academic– Refereed journals– Review journals– Bulletins

• Non-academic– Magazines– Newspapers

Refereed journals Example: Social Science & Medicine• Used to:

– disseminate research findings– find out about research by others in your field– identify methodologies for your own work

• Features– written by researchers and experts– aimed at researchers and experts– articles always cite sources– peer reviewed

• Strengths/weaknesses– high-quality, reliable information– may be slow to be published due to review process – often fee-based access/may be available via HINARI

Review journalsExample: Reviews in Medical Virology• Used to

– give an overview of the current literature in a specific research area or discipline

• Features– give an overview of the current literature in a specific

research area or discipline– titles usually contain ‘Review’, ‘Reviews’, ‘Advances

in’, ‘Current opinion in’, ‘Progress in’, ‘Trends in’ – have already done much of the literature searching for

you

Bulletins Example: Bulletin of the World Health Organization• Used for:

– making announcements to a specific audience– up-to-date information in a very specific area

• Features – written by in-house staff, or staff writers – may be issued as required, sometimes intermittently – contain short reports

• Strengths/weaknesses– very up-to-date– standard very variable

Journal Impact Factor• Is from Journal Citation Report (JCR), a product of Thomson

ISI (Institute for Scientific Information)

• is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals

• calculated yearly for journals indexed in Thomson’s Journal Citation Reports 

• used as a measure for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher impact factors are deemed to be more important than those with lower ones

Impact Factor for a 2010 journal

Is the average number of times published papers ‘are cited’ up to two years after publication

A = the number of times articles published in 2008-9 were cited in indexed journals during 2010

B = the number of ‘citable items’ published in 2008-2009 within a discipline; citable items are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or Letters-to-the-Editor

impact factor 2010 = A/B ( published in 2011)

Journal Impact Factor - Issues• Percentage of total citations occurring in the first two

years after publication varies highly among discipline (higher in biological sciences)

• Citations to an article often are made in papers written by the author(s) of the original article

• Journal can adopt editorial policies that increase its impact factor eg editorials (not citable) vs. short original articles (citable); review articles are cited more often

• Impact Factor scores can ‘influence’ promotion and tenure at universities throughout the world

Non-academic resources• Magazines

– Entertainment, information about popular culture, product information

– Easy to read, entertaining, information is lightweight and not always reliable

• Newspapers– Up-to-the minute information, current affairs,

debate– Can be valuable sources of certain kinds of

information but inherent problems of all newspapers

Internet Search tools

• Which search tools are needed?– Gateways– Databases– Search Engines

Gateway• a node or network that serves as an entrance

to another network• organize information in a structured way in

general or subject categories• examples:

– Yahoo www.yahoo.com– WHO A-Z health topics list www.who.int/topics/en/– Essential Health Links www.healthnet.org/essential-links/ – HINARI/AGORA/OARE

Database• a collection of information organized in

such a way that a computer can quickly select desired pieces of data

• an electronic filing system • traditional databases are organized by

fields, records and files• example: PubMed - a free search tool to over 19

million citations www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed

Search Engine

• a program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of documents where the keywords were found

• on the WWW, utilizes automated robotics to gather and index information

• examples• Google www.google.com• Google Scholar (more academic)

www.scholar.google.com• Yahoo www.yahoo.com

The Google search engine

This is the Google search engine. Type your query into the Google Search box and click on the Google Search button

Search results on Google

This is how Google presents the results of your search. Follow the links to the websites you wish to visit.

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. You can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

Google (search engine)

Advantages

• Searches articles, books and webpages

• Has advanced search options

• Can limit search by dates, document types, language, domain and more

Disadvantages

• No indexing terms

• Huge retrieval of almost any topic

• No ability to select citations for downloading or printing

• Built in relevancy ranking based on times cited

• Cannot limit to journal articles

Google Scholar (search engine)

Advantages

• Searches journals, books and more academic sources

• Can download individual citations into bibliographic managers

• Contains citing information with links to sources citing a specific term

Disadvantages

• No indexing terms• Huge retrieval of

almost any topic• No ability to select

citations for downloading or printing

• Built in relevancy ranking based on times cited that…

• May result in bias toward older literature

PubMed (database)Advantages

• Well indexed using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

• Can 'explode' terms

• Contains 5,419 current journals in health sciences

• Includes citations of e-journals prior to publication

• Can download info to bibliographic managers

• Can select citations to download or print

Disadvantages

• Access limited almost exclusively to basic and health sciences journals that are indexed in the database

• Does not search full-text of articles

CINAHL (database)

Advantages

• Well indexed and can 'explode' terms

• Contains 2,960 journals in nursing and allied health plus books, dissertations and other items

• Very current

• Many ways of sorting retrieval

• Can select citations to download or print

Disadvantages

• Access limited to nursing and allied health materials that are indexed in the database

• Does not search full-text for most items

Search: Asthma in Pregnancy(performed 03 December 2009)

• Google: 11,800,000 citations; first citation – October 2005; www.emedicine.com

• Google Scholar: 79,000 citations; first citation – December 2000; American Journal of Medicine (first 2009 citation is 18th)

• PubMed: 2076; first citation – December 2009; Obstetrics and Gynecology

• CINAHL: 567 in basic search; 467 in advanced search; first citation – November 2009; Journal of Pediatrics

Judkins, Dolores Zegar So You Want to use Google… MLANEWS, February 2010

Why is effective searching important?

• There are a huge number of resources online– Google claims it searches greater than 4 billion web

pages

• We need to make effective use of– electricity– computers – bandwidth – time – money – training

How to find the right information?

• Browsing – slow, sometimes appropriate

• Site-specific search tools (e.g. within bibliographic databases)

• Subject-based information gateways

• Search engines

Planning a Search Strategy

1. Define your information need2. Choose your search terms3. Decide which sources to use4. Find out how the search tool functions5. Run your search6. Review and refine you search

Note: 1-3 can be done without a computer

1. Define your information need

• What sort of information are you looking for?– Specific information, e.g. a fact or date

• Reference source, e.g. data book, encyclopaedia, dictionary, the Web or even a textbook are usually best

– General information, e.g. research areas• May require more thought, including how much information is

needed and at what depth

• Who is going to use the information?– Researcher? Academic? First year student?

• This might effect which sort of information you require

2. Choose your search terms

• What unique words do you think will appear in the site/article you want?

• Are there any key phrases?

• Are there any synonyms, alternative spellings, plurals or capitals that you need to consider?

• What broader topic is it a part of or related to?

Example: To find information on health problems of water pollution

• Keywords–’water’ ‘pollution’ ‘health’• Broader topics–‘environmental degradation’ or

‘agricultural management’ or ‘health’• Synonyms

– Water: rivers, lakes, sea, coastal,’domestic water’, etc– Pollution: ‘oil spills’, chemical, biological, toxicity, etc– Health: illness, disease, etc

• Alternative spellings: none• Plurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s)• Capitals: e.g. name of a specific lake, disease,

region

3. Decide which sources to use

What sources are appropriate?• Individuals’ and organisations’ home pages• Newspapers and magazines• Subject gateways, databases, catalogues• Journals—titles, abstracts or full text • Reference resources, e.g., encyclopaedias, dictionaries• Books• Grey literature, e.g. governmental or non- governmental

organizations publications• Print or electronic

4. How search tools function

Electronic search tools all function slightly differently and may use:

• Boolean operators

• Phrase searching

• Case sensitivity

• Truncation or wildcard functions

• Fields, stop words, relevance sorting

Boolean (Search) Operators

• Connect terms and locate records containing matching terms

• Inserted in a search box – AND, OR, NOT• Must be in UPPERCASE when used• AND, NOT operators are processed in a

left- to right sequence. These are processed first before the OR operators

• OR operators are also processed from left-to-right

AND Operator (to combine two concepts and

narrow a search)

the AND operator is used to combine two concepts e.g. hip AND fracture – in the shaded area; retrieves items containing all the search terms

Boolean AND example

Boolean example AND results

AND Operator (to combine three concepts)

the AND operator is used to combine three concepts e.g. hip AND fracture AND elderly – in the shaded area.

AND 3 terms results

OR Operator (info containing one or other term;

will broaden a search)

renal OR kidney – in the shaded area with the overlap in the middle having both search terms; retrieves items containing either search term or both search terms

Renal OR Kidney results

`

NOT Operator (in one term or the other - will

narrow a search)

pig NOT guinea – in the shaded area; eliminates items in 2nd term (guinea) or both terms

Other search engine functions

• Phrase or proximity searching: “…” or (…)– allows you to search for an exact phrase

“information literacy” prevention and (malaria parasite)• Truncation/wildcards: *

– allow you to search alternative spellings child* for child OR childs OR children parasite* for parasite OR parasites• Alternate spellings: ?

– can be used to substitute for characters anywhere in a word

wom?n would search for “woman” and “women”

Africa AND (malaria OR tuberculosis)

malaria tuberculosis

africa

Africa AND (malaria or tuberculosis) – in the shaded area

The (OR) operator retains items in each term and the AND operator is used to combine two concepts

More Search Techniques• Field Specific Searching

– author, title, journal, date, url, etc. • Language Restrictions, Humans or Animals, Gender and

other limits (to be discussed in Module 4.2 – PubMed LIMITS)• Relevancy Ranking

– a grading that gives extra weight to a document when the search terms appear in the headline or are capitalized

– every found document is calculated as 100% multiply by the angle formed by weights vector for request and weights vector for document found

5. Run the search

• Take the terms/keywords you have decided on

• Find the sources you are going to search

• Read the ‘Help’ page!! to find out how that particular tool works

• Run the search

6. Review and revise your search

Hopefully you have found what are looking for, or at least places to start from, but

• Be prepared to review and revise your search scope and strategy

• Try new sources of information (familiarity is sometimes too easy)

• Start again near the beginning of this process if you need to

Use the information!

• Ensure you keep an accurate records for future use/citation

• Promote high-quality resources to your colleagues/users

• Encourage others to adopt techniques and strategies that you have found successful

• Pass on your expert knowledge

Advanced options

Advanced search results

This is the end of Module 1.2

There is a Work Book to accompany this part of the module. The workbook will take you through a live session covering the topics included in this demonstration with working examples.

Updated 04 2010