Mapping of medical acronyms and initialisms to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) across selected systems.
INTRODUCTION: Given the common use of acronyms and initialisms in the health sciences, searchers may be entering these abbreviated terms rather than full phrases when searching online systems. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how various MEDLINE Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) interfaces map...
| Publicado en: | Journal of the Medical Library Association Vol. 94; no. 4; pp. 410 - 415 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
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University of Pittsburgh, University Library System
Oct2006
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=106235070&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 106235070 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 15365050 PI8 jtl: Journal of the Medical Library Association issn: 15365050 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2006 vid: 94 iid: 4 pid: 60406 pub: University of Pittsburgh, University Library System place: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania artinfo: ui: 106235070 106235070 2009337909 NLM17082832 106235070 ppf: 410 ppct: 5 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P tig: atl: Mapping of medical acronyms and initialisms to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) across selected systems. aug: au: Shultz M affil: Library of the Health Sciences-Urbana, University of Illinois at Chicago, 102 Medical Sciences Building, 506 South Mathews, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. shultz@uic.edu sug: subj: Acronyms Utilization Computerized Literature Searching Methods Information Retrieval Methods Medline Subject Headings Medical Literature Nomenclature Vocabulary, Controlled Human ab: INTRODUCTION: Given the common use of acronyms and initialisms in the health sciences, searchers may be entering these abbreviated terms rather than full phrases when searching online systems. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how various MEDLINE Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) interfaces map acronyms and initialisms to the MeSH vocabulary. METHODS: The interfaces used in this study were: the PubMed MeSH database, the PubMed Automatic Term Mapping feature, the NLM Gateway Term Finder, and Ovid MEDLINE. Acronyms and initialisms were randomly selected from 2 print sources. The test data set included 415 randomly selected acronyms and initialisms whose related meanings were found to be MeSH terms. Each acronym and initialism was entered into each MEDLINE MeSH interface to determine if it mapped to the corresponding MeSH term. Separately, 46 commonly used acronyms and initialisms were tested. RESULTS: While performance differed widely, the success rates were low across all interfaces for the randomly selected terms. The common acronyms and initialisms tested at higher success rates across the interfaces, but the differences between the interfaces remained. CONCLUSION: Online interfaces do not always map medical acronyms and initialisms to their corresponding MeSH phrases. This may lead to inaccurate results and missed information if acronyms and initialisms are used in search strategies. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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