Analysis of PubMed User Sessions Using a Full-Day PubMed Query Log: A Comparison of Experienced and Nonexperienced PubMed Users

Representation of Social Determinants of Health terminology in medical subject headings: impact of added terms

OBJECTIVES

To enhance and evaluate the quality of PubMed search results for Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) through the addition of new SDoH terms to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

High priority SDoH terms and definitions were collated from authoritative sources, curated based on publication frequencies, and refined by subject matter experts. Descriptive analyses were used to investigate how PubMed search details and best match results were affected by the addition of SDoH concepts to MeSH. Three information retrieval metrics (Precision, Recall, and F measure) were used to quantitatively assess the accuracy of PubMed search results. Pre- and post-update documents were clustered into topic areas using a Natural Language Processing pipeline, and SDoH relevancy assessed.

RESULTS

Addition of 35 SDoH terms to MeSH resulted in more accurate algorithmic translations of search terms and more reliable best match results. The Precision, Recall, and F measures of post-update results were significantly higher than those of pre-update results. The percentage of retrieved publications belonging to SDoH clusters was significantly greater in the post- than pre-update searches.

DISCUSSION

This evaluation confirms that inclusion of new SDoH terms in MeSH can lead to qualitative and quantitative enhancements in PubMed search retrievals. It demonstrates the methodology for and impact of suggesting new terms for MeSH indexing. It provides a foundation for future efforts across behavioral and social science research (BSSR) domains.

CONCLUSION

Improving the representation of BSSR terminology in MeSH can improve PubMed search results, thereby enhancing the ability of investigators and clinicians to build and utilize a cumulative BSSR knowledge base.

Cameriere's open apices methodology for dental age estimation in children: a scoping review from a Latin American perspective

Dental age estimation (DAE) is key to establishing an individual's identity, and this is relevant in minors. A widely used method for DAE in children is Cameriere's open apices (CAM). Despite its wide dissemination, there are no clear reports of its use in Latin American populations. A scoping review was conducted using a search strategy in the PubMed/MEDLINE database, Web of Science, and a complementary manual search. Only papers using CAM or its regression equation models for evaluating Latin American populations were included. Ten studies published between 2007 and 2020 responded to the search objective. Brazil was the country with the most studies using CAM (7/10), and the University of Macerata (Italy) was the most declared affiliation (6/10). Seven studies used the original CAM formula in populations from Brazil and Peru, while the European formula (EuCAM) was applied in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. Although the method underestimated the age values with acceptable error margins, the correction factor substantially improved the predictive power of the method. Some limitations of the method are highlighted. CAM and its variants can be useful for validation in Latin American settings, but attention to population structures and terminologies is suggested for future research.

Forensic odontology and dental age estimation research: a scoping review a decade after the NAS report on strengthening forensic science

Dental age estimation (DAE) is one of the most reliable and useful scientific methods employed by forensic odontology (FO) for human identification. In 2009, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report highlighted the need to deepen research in many disciplines, among which FO received strong criticism for specific expertise. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview in order to systematically map the latest original research done in FO, as well as identify DAE within this field. A systematic search was performed from 2014 to 2019. In total, 644 studies were identified for qualitative analysis: DAE was the most studied topic (41.30%). Asia was the most productive continent with 58.27% of the global production on DAE; India was the most productive Asian country, with 32.33% and 55.48% of global and Asian production, respectively. The University of Macerata (Italy), KU Leuven (Belgium), University of Split (Croatia), and University of São Paulo (Brazil) led DAE research. Authors from leading countries on DAE research demonstrated great individual productivity, which is evidence of their scientific efforts, but also possible risks if the continuity of this line of research depends on them. Although FO has significantly focused its research on DAE, the absence of publications on controversial topics but necessary for research according to the NAS report shows the possible lack of interest of authors or journals to address them.

A Review on Medical Textual Question Answering Systems Based on Deep Learning Approaches

The advent of Question Answering Systems (QASs) has been envisaged as a promising solution and an efficient approach for retrieving significant information over the Internet. A considerable amount of research work has focused on open domain QASs based on deep learning techniques due to the availability of data sources. However, the medical domain receives less attention due to the shortage of medical datasets. Although Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are empowering the field of Medical Question-Answering (MQA) by providing medical information to answer user questions, the gap is still large in the medical domain, especially for textual-based sources. Therefore, in this study, the medical textual question-answering systems based on deep learning approaches were reviewed, and recent architectures of MQA systems were thoroughly explored. Furthermore, an in-depth analysis of deep learning approaches used in different MQA system tasks was provided. Finally, the different critical challenges posed by MQA systems were highlighted, and recommendations to effectively address them in forthcoming MQA systems were given out.

Physiotherapists' Use of Web-Based Information Resources to Fulfill Their Information Needs During a Theoretical Examination: Randomized Crossover Trial

Background

The widespread availability of internet-connected smart devices in the health care setting has the potential to improve the delivery of research evidence to the care pathway and fulfill health care professionals’ information needs.

Objective

This study aims to evaluate the frequency with which physiotherapists experience information needs, the capacity of digital information resources to fulfill these needs, and the specific types of resources they use to do so.

Methods

A total of 38 participants (all practicing physiotherapists; 19 females, 19 males) were randomly assigned to complete three 20-question multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ) examinations under 3 conditions in a randomized crossover study design: assisted by a web browser, assisted by a federated search portal system, and unassisted. MCQ scores, times, and frequencies of information needs were recorded for overall examination-level and individual question-level analyses. Generalized estimating equations were used to assess differences between conditions for the primary outcomes. A log file analysis was conducted to evaluate participants’ web search and retrieval behaviors.

Results

Participants experienced an information need in 55.59% (845/1520) MCQs (assisted conditions only) and exhibited a mean improvement of 10% and 16% in overall examination scores for the federated search and web browser conditions, respectively, compared with the unassisted condition (P<.001). In the web browser condition, Google was the most popular resource and the only search engine used, accounting for 1273 (64%) of hits, followed by PubMed (195 hits; 10% of total). In the federated search condition, Wikipedia and PubMed were the most popular resources with 1518 (46% of total) and 1273 (39% of total) hits, respectively.

Conclusions

In agreement with the findings of previous research studies among medical physicians, the results of this study demonstrate that physiotherapists frequently experience information needs. This study provides new insights into the preferred digital information resources used by physiotherapists to fulfill these needs. Future research should clarify the implications of physiotherapists’ apparent high reliance on Google, whether these results reflect the authentic clinical environment, and whether fulfilling clinical information needs alters practice behaviors or improves patient outcomes.

Rethinking the Journal Impact Factor and Publishing in the Digital Age

Clinical and experimental literature search has changed significantly over the past few decades, and with it, the way in which we value information. Today, our need for immediate access to relevant and specific literature, regardless of specialty, has led to a growing demand for open access to publications. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) has been a long-time standard for representing the quality or "prestige" of a journal, but it appears to be losing its relevance. Here, we define the JIF and deconstruct its validity as a modern measure of a journal's quality, discuss the current models of academic publication, including their advantages and shortcomings, and discuss the benefits and shortcomings of a variety of open-access models, including costs to the author. We have quantified a nonsubscribed physician's access to full articles associated with dermatologic disease and aesthetics cited on PubMed. For some of the most common dermatology conditions, 23.1 percent of citations (ranging from 17.2% for melasma to 31.9% for malignant melanoma) were available as free full articles, and for aesthetic procedures, 18.9 percent of citations (ranging from 11.9% for laser hair removal to 27.9% for botulinum toxin) were available as free full articles. Finally, we discuss existing alternative metrics for measuring journal impact and propose the adoption of a superior publishing model, one that satisfies modern day standards of scholarly knowledge pursuit and dissemination of scholarly publications for dermatology and all of medical science.

Impact of a Search Engine on Clinical Decisions Under Time and System Effectiveness Constraints: Research Protocol

BACKGROUND

Many clinical questions arise during patient encounters that clinicians are unable to answer. An evidence-based medicine approach expects that clinicians will seek and apply the best available evidence to answer clinical questions. One commonly used source of such evidence is scientific literature, such as that available through MEDLINE and PubMed. Clinicians report that 2 key reasons why they do not use search systems to answer questions is that it takes too much time and that they do not expect to find a definitive answer. So, the question remains about how effectively scientific literature search systems support time-pressured clinicians in making better clinical decisions. The results of this study are important because they can help clinicians and health care organizations to better assess their needs with respect to clinical decision support (CDS) systems and evidence sources. The results and data captured will contribute a significant data collection to inform the design of future CDS systems to better meet the needs of time-pressured, practicing clinicians.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of using a scientific medical literature search system on clinical decision making. Furthermore, to understand the impact of realistic time pressures on clinicians, we vary the search time available to find clinical answers. Finally, we assess the impact of improvements in search system effectiveness on the same clinical decisions.

METHODS

In this study, 96 practicing clinicians and final year medical students are presented with 16 clinical questions which they must answer without access to any external resource. The same questions are then represented to the clinicians; however, in this part of the study, the clinicians can use a scientific literature search engine to find evidence to support their answers. The time pressures of practicing clinicians are simulated by limiting answer time to one of 3, 6, or 9 min per question. The correct answer rate is reported both before and after search to assess the impact of the search system and the time constraint. In addition, 2 search systems that use the same user interface, but which vary widely in their search effectiveness, are employed so that the impact of changes in search system effectiveness on clinical decision making can also be assessed.

RESULTS

Recruiting began for the study in June 2018. As of the April 4, 2019, there were 69 participants enrolled. The study is expected to close by May 30, 2019, with results to be published in July.

CONCLUSIONS

All data collected in this study will be made available at the University of Queensland's UQ eSpace public data repository.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

DERR1-10.2196/12803.

PEDro searching has improved over time: A comparison of search commands from two six-month periods three years apart

BACKGROUND

In 2014-2015, the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) was searched poorly by users; few search commands used sophisticated features and ∼20% contained errors. To improve the quality of PEDro searches, users now receive error messages when using incorrect search commands and have access to video tutorials.

OBJECTIVES

To determine whether search quality has improved since error messages and tutorials were implemented; and evaluate the content of PEDro searches.

METHODS

Google Analytics was used to access all search commands on PEDro (between 1 August 2017 and 31 January 2018) and extract the following data: total number of search commands; 25 most common simple and advanced search commands; and frequency of search errors (e.g. Boolean operators) or use of sophisticated features (e.g. truncation/wildcards). Two researchers independently coded the subdiscipline (e.g. musculoskeletal, neurology) and PICO elements (Population; Intervention; Comparison; Outcome) from a random sample of 200 simple and 200 advanced search commands. Data were compared to an identical analysis performed in 2014-2015 to determine whether the content or quality of search commands had changed.

RESULTS

There has been a very small increase in the use of truncation/wildcards since 2014-2015 (1.4% increase in simple and 1.9% in advanced search commands; p < 0.001) and small reductions in search errors (Boolean operators: 3.7% reduction in simple and 3.2% in advanced; brackets: 0.9% and 0.4%; non-ASCII characters: 3.1% and 1.6%; p < 0.001 for all analyses). Overall, only 6% of simple and 9% of advanced search commands used sophisticated features, while 16% of simple and 12% of advanced search commands contained errors. The content of PEDro search commands was largely similar to searches from 2014 to 2015.

CONCLUSION

There has been a small reduction in the number of search commands containing errors, and only a very small increase in the use of sophisticated features. These improvements may be explained by video tutorials on how to optimise searching and warnings that appear when users enter search commands containing errors. However, with 16% of simple and 12% of advanced search commands still containing errors, additional strategies to further improve the quality of searches are needed.

Finding the Integrated Care Evidence Base in PubMed and Beyond: A Bibliometric Study of the Challenges

INTRODUCTION

Integrated care research evidence should be optimally visible and accessible to stakeholders. This study examines the contribution of specific databases to the discovery of integrated care evidence, and tests the usefulness of Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) indexing of this literature within PubMed.

METHODS

We used bibliometric methods to analyse the integrated care literature indexed within six databases between 2007 and 2016. An international expert advisory group assessed the relevance of citations randomly retrieved from PubMed using MeSH term 'Delivery of Health Care, Integrated'.

RESULTS

Integrated care evidence is diffuse, spread across many journals. Between 2007 and 2016, integrated care citations grew substantially, with the rate of increase highest in Embase. PubMed contributes the largest proportion of unique citations (citations not included in any of the other databases analysed), followed by Embase, PsycINFO and CINAHL. On average, expert reviewers rated 42.5% of citations retrieved by MeSH term 'Delivery of Health Care, Integrated' as relevant to integrated care. When these citations were dual reviewed, inter-rater agreement was low.

CONCLUSION

MeSH terms alone are insufficient to retrieve integrated care content from PubMed. Embase and CINAHL contain unique content not found in PubMed that should not be overlooked. A validated search filter is proposed to simplify the process of finding integrated care research for clinicians, managers and decision-makers.

Expert Search Strategies: The Information Retrieval Practices of Healthcare Information Professionals

BACKGROUND

Healthcare information professionals play a key role in closing the knowledge gap between medical research and clinical practice. Their work involves meticulous searching of literature databases using complex search strategies that can consist of hundreds of keywords, operators, and ontology terms. This process is prone to error and can lead to inefficiency and bias if performed incorrectly.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to investigate the search behavior of healthcare information professionals, uncovering their needs, goals, and requirements for information retrieval systems.

METHODS

A survey was distributed to healthcare information professionals via professional association email discussion lists. It investigated the search tasks they undertake, their techniques for search strategy formulation, their approaches to evaluating search results, and their preferred functionality for searching library-style databases. The popular literature search system PubMed was then evaluated to determine the extent to which their needs were met.

RESULTS

The 107 respondents indicated that their information retrieval process relied on the use of complex, repeatable, and transparent search strategies. On average it took 60 minutes to formulate a search strategy, with a search task taking 4 hours and consisting of 15 strategy lines. Respondents reviewed a median of 175 results per search task, far more than they would ideally like (100). The most desired features of a search system were merging search queries and combining search results.

CONCLUSIONS

Healthcare information professionals routinely address some of the most challenging information retrieval problems of any profession. However, their needs are not fully supported by current literature search systems and there is demand for improved functionality, in particular regarding the development and management of search strategies.

Novice and experienced users’ search performance and satisfaction with Web of Science and Scopus

This paper aims to determine novice and experienced users’ search performance and satisfaction with the interfaces of the Web of Science and Scopus. This is a descriptive-analytical study. Snowball sampling was used. Given queries were searched by 15 experienced and 15 novice users and their search performance was recorded using Camtasia. Their satisfaction was determined by the QUIS questionnaire. The experienced users were more satisfied with both databases than the novices but the difference was not significant. The results imply that even a limited amount of search experience provides search performance benefits in using databases to locate information. If a user interface is designed in a proper manner and considering users’ needs, users get better results.