Biosis Previews is the electronic version of Biological Abstracts and Biological Abstracts/RRM. Online it is updated weekly and is hosted in the U.S. by Dialog Corporation as Datastar or as DIALOG, and by Ovid Technologies. A corresponding CD ROM is also updated weekly and is available from BIOSIS or from Ovid Technologies.
The database for these titles indexes approximately 9,000 journals, books, reports and meetings from over 100 countries. It covers a broad range of life sciences and includes more preclinical and animal research than does MEDLINE. Particular strengths lie in the inclusion of conference literature and contact information for authors.
Biosis Previews and its print counterparts have recently begun to employ a new structured “relational” indexing. From a recent (October 1998) browsing of the index through the Dialog interface, suggested terms for a search about Hashimoto’s disease follow. The items in bold lettering were the most productive and it is important to use both to conduct a thorough search.
EMBASE, the electronic version of Excerpta Medica, is updated weekly with a turnaround of about 15 days from receipt of the journal. It is hosted in the U.S. by Dialog Corporation as Datastar or DIALOG, and by Ovid Technologies.
The database supporting these publications indexes approximately 3,500 journals from more than 110 countries. It contains 11 million records and adds about 370,000 each year. Abstracts are included in about 75% of the new records. These biomedical indexes have strong clinical and pharmaceutical foci. The indexing of drug trade names and manufacturers is a particularly useful.
EMBASE and Exerpta Medica employ highly controlled indexing and provide a thesaurus. It is important to remember that the most specific descriptors for an article are the ones indexed; a general term will not bring up articles under a specific term unless the general term is “exploded” and the desired term is a narrower EMTREE descriptor. This database indexes Hashimoto’s disease under the EMTERM "Hashimoto disease" with a few items under "chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis."
Index Medicus. Bethesda, MD: U.S.
Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National
Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine. Monthly.
1879-1899; 1903- .
MEDLINE. Bethesda,
MD: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service,
National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine. 1966-
.
Index Medicus is issued monthly with annual cumulations and cumulated abridged versions of various date spans, e.g. 1970-1997. The thesaurus, Medical Subject Headings, Annotated Alphabetic List, with its companion Medical Subject Headings, Tree Structures is thorough and often preferred to online versions by searchers.
MEDLINE, the electronic database, is available in CD ROM or online. CD ROMs are updated monthly and are available through the National Library of Medicine or from Ovid Technologies. The online version is updated weekly, except at times when retrospective indexing is being done at year end. This retrospective indexing is particularly valuable as it eliminates the need to search under outdated terms in the backfiles of electronic versions. The online version is available on the World Wide Web for free as PubMed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/ and through GratefulMed at http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/. It is also available commercially by services such as Dialog and Ovid with value-added search interfaces.
MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine’s comprehensive database of medical literature including Index Medicus, Index to Dental Literature and International Nursing Index. It covers clinical and laboratory biomedical research done in 70 countries world-wide and is a particularly good source for clinical research done in the United States and other English speaking countries. Approximately 400,000 records are added each year to this database of over 13.5 million records. More than half of these include abstracts.
Index Medicus and MEDLINE have highly controlled indexing referred to as “MeSH,” for Medical Subject Headings. Regardless of the interface, a searcher should use the thesaurus to find effective subject headings, subheadings, and helpful limits that may be applied to the search. The tree structures of these MeSH terms will show their relationships to other subjects. It is important to remember that the most specific descriptors for an article are the ones indexed; a general term will not bring up articles under a specific term unless the general term is “exploded” and the desired term is a narrower MeSH term.
For references that deal specifically with Hashimoto’s disease search the MeSH thyroiditis, autoimmune. It has no narrower headings and appears in the tree structures for both thyroiditis and autoimmune diseases. There are a few references also under "Hashitoxicosis," the condition in which breakdown of parenchymal tissue causes a temporary hyperthyroid state. Results of MEDLINE searches for evidence-based research about Hashimoto's disease may be viewed on this site. Here are a few other examples of MeSH terms for this subject:
Science Citation Index is published bimonthly with annual cumulations
and is available from ISI in CD ROMs which are updated quarterly.
SciSearch is updated weekly.
SciSearch is hosted by Dialog in the US and it incorporates
the databases of Science Citation Index and Current Contents.
Since 1991 author abstracts have been included in the records.
Science Citation Index, and its online version SciSearch, index approximately 4,500 titles, emphasizing international journals and monographic series representing about 100 science disciplines in over 50 countries. Two of these disciplines, “Endocrinology & Metabolism” and “Immunology,” include investigations especially relevant to Hashimoto’s disease. Because only automatic indexing is employed in their database with no structured human indexing, they have the quickest coverage of new items among the databases presented here. Indexing is performed on all substantive items in each journal issue and individual chapters of monographic series are indexed. As the name implies the unique feature of these indexes is their emphasis on citations; they list all the references given in each article. Using the name of the first author listed for an article, one can use the Citation Index to find subsequent articles, chapters or responses that cite that particular article. The Source Index may be searched by any author’s name, regardless of its sequential placement, to find records of all articles published under that name in the time period of the index. The Permuterm Subject Index presents a key word in context tool to locate articles. The Corporate Index allows searching by the organization or geographic area from which an item originated.
A recent (October 1998) view SciSearch’s indexing through Dialog’s interface
revealed the terms below. The ones in bold letters were the most
productive for this search.
· autoimmune thyroiditis
· autoimmune thyrotoxicosis
· chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis
· Hashimoto encephalopathy
· Hashimoto s
· Hashimoto s disease
· Hashimoto s thyroiditis
· Hashimoto thyreoiditis
· Hashimoto thyroiditis
· Hashomoto toxicosis
· Hashimoto-disease
· Hashimoto-thyroiditis
· Hashimoto-toxicosis
· Hashimotos
Medical Matrix. [www.medmatrix.org/index.asp] Indexes ranked, peer-reviewed, annotated clinical medical resources on the Internet.
Medical World Search. [www.mwsearch.com]
This search engine for medicine uses an index of selected medical sites
on the Web. It has controlled vocabulary, including MeSH terms, and
an online thesaurus.
General and targeted medical and scientific journals can be scanned for current research findings with these current awareness tools:
Current contents. Agriculture, Biology & Environmental
Sciences. Philadelphia, PA: Institute for Scientific Information. Weekly.
1967- .
Current Contents. Clinical medicine. Philadelphia, PA:
Institute for Scientific Information. Weekly. Jan. 5, 1987- .
Current Contents on CD-ROM. Philadelphia, PA: Institute
for Scientific Information.
Current Contents Search. Philadelphia, PA: Institute
for Scientific Information. 1994- .
The weekly Current Contents CD-ROM version is available on Ovid software. The Current Contents Search CD-ROM products are available through ISI, SilverPlatter Information, Inc., or Ovid. The online version of Current Contents Search covers a 2 years time span and is hosted in the U.S. by Ovid Technologies, Dialog Corporation as DataStar and as DIALOG file 440.
These current awareness tools list the Tables of Contents of hundreds of journals within their subject scopes. They are used to keep up to date on current items as they are published. There is a 3 to 5 day turn around from receipt to appearance in the database, which then appears in print weekly. The electronic database is incorporated with Science Citation Index into SciSearch (see above). Current Contents is also available through OVID.