Tag: tips
Web of Knowledge interface changes
Web of Knowledge databases including Web of Science, BIOSIS Previews, CAB Abstracts and Global Health, Data Citation Index, Inspec, and Zoological Record deployed a new user interface beginning January 12, 2014. Among the changes:
- The default search page now features a single search box for the Topic field; as before, the field can be changed and search boxes for additional fields can be added
- Web of Science cited reference searches must now be selected from a drop-down menu above the search box
- The UC-eLinks icon to access full text is now found under a button labelled “Full Text” on the search results and article record pages
- Search details are visible after clicking on a link labelled “More” under the “You searched for” heading on the search results page
- An “Add to Marked List” button replaces the former icon on the search results page
- A “Create Citation Alert” link and icon replace the former button on article pages
Video tutorials on specific features of the new interface can be viewed here: http://wokinfo.com/training_support/training/web-of-science/
Live online trainings occur monthly. This month they begin Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 11 am PST. The trainings are free, but advance registration is required: http://wokinfo.com/training_support/training/
Quick Reference Cards and factsheets for many Web of Knowledge resources can be downloaded here: http://wokinfo.com/training_support/guidesfactsheets/
You can always contact a UC Berkeley librarian with your questions: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Help/research_help.html
Need to find some cost studies for your project?
Cost studies can be difficult to find; here are a couple of places to try.
PubMed provides two ways to search for these. One is to go to PubMed’s Topic-Specific Queries page. Once there, click on Health Services Research Queries (HSR). This page provides specialized PubMed searches on healthcare quality and costs.
Enter your terms in the search box (eg, asthma, breastfeeding, etc), select either costs or economics, and select broad or narrow. Then click search. Clicking “broad” will retrieve more articles (but some may be less relevant to your topic), with “narrow” retrieving fewer but more relevant articles.
Wondering as we did what the difference between costs and economics is? PubMed defines them for you here.
The second method is to search PubMed directly combining terms relating to your topic with any of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms nested under or including Economics. Scroll down the page to find MeSH terms to try such as “Costs and Cost Analysis” and “Fees and Charges”. An example of such a search in PubMed for cost studies on breastfeeding might be:
“Costs and Cost Analysis”[Mesh] AND “Breast Feeding”[Mesh]
Tip: New to PubMed or MeSH terms, or want a quick refresher? The Public Health Library can help. We have created a PubMed Help page for CDPH. Or give us a call at (510) 642-2510.
Another source for cost study information is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The AHRQ has information on costs of hospital and ER visits among much more at the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). For example, you can get information here on the cost for an average hospital stay for a diabetes-related diagnosis by region of the country.
Relevance Sorting Now Available for PubMed Searches
PubMed now includes a new relevance sort option! The “Relevance” sort option is available from the “Display Settings” menu under the “Sort by” selections. This option was added to PubMed on October 22.
The relevance sort order for search results is based on an algorithm that analyzes each PubMed citation that includes the search terms. For each search query, “weight” is calculated for citations depending on how many search terms are found and in which fields they are found. In addition, recently-published articles are given a somewhat higher weight for sorting.
The most recent sort by selection is retained for subsequent search results until a different sort order is selected, or after eight hours of inactivity.
Read more about this exciting new feature here.
MEDLINE/PubMed Year-End Processing Activities for 2013: How Will This Affect Your Searches?
On November 20, 2013, NLM expects to temporarily suspend the addition of fully-indexed MEDLINE citations to PubMed. Publisher-supplied and in process citations will continue to be added. This annual activity allows the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to change the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) main headings as well as Supplementary Concept Records that standardize names and associated numbers for chemical, protocols, and diseases that are not main headings. The MeSH edits include existing MEDLINE citations to conform with the 2014 version of MeSH, and other global changes. PubMed MEDLINE citations, translation tables, and the MeSH database will have been updated to reflect 2014 MeSH sometime in mid-December.
This means that if you do a search limiting terms to fields affected by indexing (e.g., MeSH terms), it will not retrieve in process or publisher-supplied records. Therefore, during end-of-year activities when NLM is not adding completed, indexed citations to MEDLINE/PubMed, such searches – including those stored in My NCBI and retrieved through RSS feed stored searches – may not retrieve the newest records till mid-December. To retrieve new, in process records during this time, you should use searches that do not limit to affected fields, such as keyword searches. By mid-December, the in process citations that have been indexed since November 20 will be replaced as indexed citations with 2014 MeSH terms, Publication Types, etc. Searches, including My NCBI Stored Searches, containing tagged search terms will then retrieve all applicable MEDLINE records.
PubMed has more information for you on this, such as exactly what data with search tags is added to MEDLINE records during indexing.
Free Epidemiologic Software
From the latest Epidemiology Monitor.
"With improvements in commercial software, such as SAS, SPSS, Stata, and others, is there still a need for free epidemiologic software?
Commercial software can be expensive, may have a steep learning curve, and may not provide certain types of desired analyses. In this article information on three free epidemiologic/statistical programs is provided: Epi Info, OpenEpi, and WinPepi."
In addition, you may also be interested in perusing Wikipedia’s List of Statistical Packages and Comparison of Statistical Packages.
MedlinePlus or PubMed Health?
Both MedlinePlus and PubMed Health provide information for consumers and clinicians on prevention and treatment of diseases and conditions. And both are provided by the National Library of Medicine. So, when should you search MedlinePlus, and when would searching PubMed Health be more effective?
MedlinePlus brings you up-to-date reliable consumer information on over 900 diseases, conditions, and wellness issues. The health news page displays the most recent news from HealthDay and Reuters Health articles. An easy to read section offers materials that are written at a 5th to 8th grade reading level. In addition, MedlinePlus has interactive health tutorials with audio for those who struggle with reading English. Just type the disease or condition you wish to research into the search box or look for it in the A-Z Health Topics list. MedlinePlus also contains drug and supplement information.
PubMed Health has information on systematic reviews of clinical trials. It can help you research what, if any, treatments and prevention methods have been proven to work. Search results in PubMed Health will include summaries and full text of selected systematic reviews as well as information for consumers and clinicians that is based on those reviews. A concurrent search is done in PubMed for systematic reviews, with the first five of those results appearing on the right side of the results page.
So, if you need information to give to a client on the health effects of secondhand smoke, you might try MedlinePlus first. If, however, you want to see research on the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine, then you might want to give PubMed Health a try instead.
Go to MedlinePlus to check out its features today.
PubMed Health also appears under the “Popular” menu at the bottom of the PubMed home page. It is also an option in the drop-down menu to the left of the PubMed search box.
Interested in disseminating a public health innovation, program or research finding?
Looking for a tool to that can help?
The six-step Dissemination Planning Tool guides the reader through the creation of a dissemination plan. With prompting questions and tables, this easy-to-use handbook helps identify relevant issues needed to develop a comprehensive dissemination workplan.
The guidelines provided in this tool can be used to support the dissemination of public health innovations. The tool is designed to help users think about the processes they would use to disseminate findings or products so that they have "real world" impact in practice.
This planning tool was developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. More details available on the AHRQ Advances in Patient Safety: From Research to Implementation website.
Cool Web of Science Tools: find the top authors and journals on your topic
Web of Science (WoS) is a great multi-disciplinary tool for finding citations on your topic, and for cited reference searching. But WoS has many other features you may not know about. Did you know you can find the top authors are who are publishing on a topic? Or, that you can find the journals with the most articles on your topic? Here’s how:
Start by searching on a topic of interest in Web of Science:
On the search results page, click the Analyze Results link:
To find the journals with the most articles on your topic, select Source Titles in the Rank the records by this field: box. You can show the top 10-500 results, and set the minimum number of records a selection must have to appear in your list. In the image below, we will see the top 25 journal titles, and each must have at least 10 articles from the search:
After clicking Analyze, here are the results:
In this example, there are an additional 27 Source Titles with at least 25 articles.
You now have the option to view the results of any journal titles you select, download the results, or go back and re-analyze. You can then do the same search, choosing Author instead of Source Title, to get a list of the top publishing authors in this topic.
Cool Web of Science Tools: find the top authors and journals on your topic
Web of Science (WoS) is a great multi-disciplinary tool for finding citations on your topic, and for cited reference searching. But WoS has many other features you may not know about. Did you know you can find the top authors are who are publishing on a topic? Or, that you can find the journals with the most articles on your topic? Here’s how:
Start by searching on a topic of interest in Web of Science:
On the search results page, click the Analyze Results link:
To find the journals with the most articles on your topic, select Source Titles in the Rank the records by this field: box. You can show the top 10-500 results, and set the minimum number of records a selection must have to appear in your list. In the image below, we will see the top 25 journal titles, and each must have at least 10 articles from the search:
After clicking Analyze, here are the results:
In this example, there are an additional 27 Source Titles with at least 25 articles.
You now have the option to view the results of any journal titles you select, download the results, or go back and re-analyze. You can then do the same search, choosing Author instead of Source Title, to get a list of the top publishing authors in this topic.
The California Department of Public Health in the 1940s
As CDPH goes through the accreditation process, it is interesting to examine historical efforts at assessing the Department’s efforts.
Per a 1943 American Public Health Association study of the department, “The California State Department of Public Health is the second oldest in the country, having been established on April 15, 1870, only twenty years after the establishment of its State government.” (p. 16) The report made a number of major recommendations to improve the department.
In 1948, another American Public Health Association report was published called “A Study of the California State Department of Public Health: The California Department of Public Health in 1947-1948.”
The 1948 study characterized the 1943 report by saying, “In 1943 … the Department of Public Health could not be considered a good state department of health. The organization was loose and ill adapted to effective administration … Program planning was segmented and specialized and lacked coordination. Salaries of professional personnel were low.”
Regarding the state of affairs in 1948, the study found that, “Today the California Department of Public Health will rank with the best in the nation.” (p. 4) The 89-page report goes on to describe important achievements, as well as major unmet needs. A table of the CDPH budget is presented, with total 1947-48 estimated expenditures of about $8.8 million and $1.9 million for the 1942-43 budget.
If you wish to look at the 1943 or 1948 report, please make a Document Delivery request or request this via your web portal.
1. A study of the California State Department of Public Health; summary and major recommendations. Made by the American Public Health Association, 1943. n.p., 1943.
Call number: RA27.K1 A5 1943
2. A study of the California State Department of Public Health. Made by the American Public Health Association. n.p., 1948.
Call number: RA27.K1 A5 1948
There is also a brief history of the department available:
History of the organizational development of the California State Department of Public Health. Calif. : s.n., between 1977 and 1978.
Call number: RA27 .H57 1977a