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Use the BIOSIS Previews® Thesaurus to Target a Search?
TOPIC: BIOSIS Previews® (File 5,55) contains citations from Biological Abstracts® (BA) and Biological Abstracts/Reports, Reviews, and Meetings® (BA/RRM®) (formerly BioResearch Index®), the major publications of BIOSIS. Together, these publications constitute the foremost English-language service providing comprehensive worldwide coverage of research in the biological and biomedical sciences.
BIOSIS is a good place to look for animal studies in molecular genetics. The highly-structured indexing in BIOSIS also adapts to flexible search strategies. The indexers keep the keywords from the original document in context by placing them in the appropriate field, such as the title, author, organism, source, gene name and so on. Searchers can use a specific field (e.g., Organisms (OI=, /OI), Diseases (/DS), Gene Name (GE=, /GE), etc.), or they can use the superlabel /DE. It is always a good idea to include the Title (/TI) field as well (e.g. <term>/TI,DE). Using the EXPAND command, you can check the BIOSIS thesaurus for specialized terms.
Related databases include EMBASE® (File 73), SciSearch®: A Cited Reference Science Database (File 34), PASCAL (File 144) and MEDLINE® (File 155).
In this example, you will use the thesaurus in BIOSIS Previews to find animal studies regarding vascular endothelial growth factors or VEGF technology.
COMMAND SUMMARY
BEGIN 55
SELECT (VASCULAR(W)ENDOTHELIAL(W)GROWTH(W)FACTOR? OR VEGF)/TI,DE
VISUAL EXPAND ANIMALS
Check the appropriate term and click Related
Check the appropriate term and click Related
Check the appropriate term and click Select
SELECT S1 AND S2
SELECT S3/2008
TYPE S4/8/1-5
Click Links > Display > Type Full Record
HOW TO...
1. BEGIN File 55 to search BIOSIS Previews, which includes data from 1993 to the present.
Note: File 5 contains data from 1926 to the present.
2. SELECT terms word-by-word with proximity connectors (W) and qualify to the Title OR the Descriptor (/TI,DE) fields. Be sure to OR in synonyms or acronyms and “nest” the terms in parentheses so that Dialog restricts all the terms to the two fields.
Use a question mark for truncation to allow for variant word endings, such as factor,factors.
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3. VISUAL EXPAND a word to see if it has related terms. The second column, RT, appears. It indicates that “animals” has two related terms. The first column, Items, shows the number of records containing the term.
4. Check the box for the appropriate term and click the Related button.
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5. Animals has a broader term, “Taxa Notes Terms,” with 73 related terms. Taxa Notes are controlled common names of broad groups of organisms. Check the box next to Taxa Notes Terms and click Related.
The benefits of using controlled vocabulary include improved relevancy and precision.
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6. Check the box next to the appropriate term and click Select. |
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7. Combine Sets 1 and 2 (S1 and S2).
8. Use database LIMIT options to restrict retrieval to the most recent publication year.
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9. TYPE a few records in Format 8 to view titles, descriptors and publication years. Browse through the Descriptor terms and take in the specific subfields. This method provides additional insight to tailor a search to a specific concentration.
Notice the Major Concepts field. Major Concepts are not designed to stand alone, but to be used in conjunction with other descriptors for a more focused search.
Nonhuman Mammals picked up a variety of sub-terms in the hierarchy.
To see the complete record, click Links at the top of the record > Display > Type Full Record.
Note: Some records are omitted from the display.
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Alternatively, you can TYPE records (e.g., TYPE s4/9/1,3-5,7).
BIOSIS provides a Digital Object Identifier, (DOI) “Item Identifier,” which may take you directly to the fulltext of the document or to a professional society website that restricts display to members only, or to the publisher’s website, where you may purchase the fulltext.
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RELATED HOW DO I...? SOLUTIONS
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