Desktop search engines: a modern way to hand search in full text
The Lancet: "Desktop search engines: a modern way to hand search in full text
Adam Magos and Pietro Gambadauro
As medical literature expands, electronic literature searches have become very useful for researchers and clinicians alike. MEDLINE, for instance, a service of the US National Library of Medicine, can be accessed on the internet via PubMed and searched with the Entrez text-based search and retrieval system using keywords or MeSH headings.
Although such searches are very powerful, they are restricted to searching within specified fields (eg, author, journal, year of publication, keywords, MeSH headings) and not the full text. As a result, such searches are limited by the quality of indexing.1
This shortcoming was illustrated by a study of search strategies for systematic reviews which showed that, even when using two electronic databases in combination (MEDLINE and EMBASE), trial retrieval was incomplete.2 Overall, only 30% of relevant papers identified were retrieved by both databases. The authors concluded that “hand searching of selected journals may be necessary to perform a comprehensive search”.
Clearly, the ability to search full-text articles would be highly desirable. Hand-searching of printed articles is, however, very labour-intensive. We propose an alternative strategy that makes use of computer software commonly referred to as a desktop search engine. There are several free desktop search engines available (eg, Copernic Desktop Search, Google Desktop, Yahoo! Desktop Search) that can index files on the computer hard disk and provide almost instantaneous searching of not only the filename, but the full text contained in commonly used files (eg, PDFs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).3
Use of such software makes it possible to search through an entire database of articles (as well as spreadsheets and presentations) stored on a personal computer on a full-text basis—articles which are widely available for download from the publishers. Programs such as Copernic and Yahoo! also have the facility to simultaneously preview the full text file with search terms highlighted. These search engines work in the background when the computer is idle, and the extent and timing of the searches can be customised.
We believe that a desktop search of full-text downloaded articles from selected journals in combination with conventional electronic database searching makes retrieval more accurate by offering the specificity of an indexing terms-based search together with the sensitivity of a hand-search.
We declare that we have no conflict of interest.
References
1. Dickersin K, Scherer R, Lefebvre C. Identifying relevant studies for systematic reviews. BMJ 1994; 309: 1286-1291. MEDLINE
2. Suarez-Almazor ME, Belseck E, Homik J, Dorgan M, Ramos-Remus C. Identifying clinical trials in the medical literature with electronic databases: MEDLINE alone is not enough. Control Clin Trials 2000; 21: 476-487. PDF (348 KB) | MEDLINE | CrossRef
3. Pegoraro R. Seeking a more intuitive search tool. Washington Post March 27 2005; F07:"
Adam Magos and Pietro Gambadauro
As medical literature expands, electronic literature searches have become very useful for researchers and clinicians alike. MEDLINE, for instance, a service of the US National Library of Medicine, can be accessed on the internet via PubMed and searched with the Entrez text-based search and retrieval system using keywords or MeSH headings.
Although such searches are very powerful, they are restricted to searching within specified fields (eg, author, journal, year of publication, keywords, MeSH headings) and not the full text. As a result, such searches are limited by the quality of indexing.1
This shortcoming was illustrated by a study of search strategies for systematic reviews which showed that, even when using two electronic databases in combination (MEDLINE and EMBASE), trial retrieval was incomplete.2 Overall, only 30% of relevant papers identified were retrieved by both databases. The authors concluded that “hand searching of selected journals may be necessary to perform a comprehensive search”.
Clearly, the ability to search full-text articles would be highly desirable. Hand-searching of printed articles is, however, very labour-intensive. We propose an alternative strategy that makes use of computer software commonly referred to as a desktop search engine. There are several free desktop search engines available (eg, Copernic Desktop Search, Google Desktop, Yahoo! Desktop Search) that can index files on the computer hard disk and provide almost instantaneous searching of not only the filename, but the full text contained in commonly used files (eg, PDFs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).3
Use of such software makes it possible to search through an entire database of articles (as well as spreadsheets and presentations) stored on a personal computer on a full-text basis—articles which are widely available for download from the publishers. Programs such as Copernic and Yahoo! also have the facility to simultaneously preview the full text file with search terms highlighted. These search engines work in the background when the computer is idle, and the extent and timing of the searches can be customised.
We believe that a desktop search of full-text downloaded articles from selected journals in combination with conventional electronic database searching makes retrieval more accurate by offering the specificity of an indexing terms-based search together with the sensitivity of a hand-search.
We declare that we have no conflict of interest.
References
1. Dickersin K, Scherer R, Lefebvre C. Identifying relevant studies for systematic reviews. BMJ 1994; 309: 1286-1291. MEDLINE
2. Suarez-Almazor ME, Belseck E, Homik J, Dorgan M, Ramos-Remus C. Identifying clinical trials in the medical literature with electronic databases: MEDLINE alone is not enough. Control Clin Trials 2000; 21: 476-487. PDF (348 KB) | MEDLINE | CrossRef
3. Pegoraro R. Seeking a more intuitive search tool. Washington Post March 27 2005; F07:"
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