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Life Sciences Graduate Students - Research Tips: Developing Search Strategies

Search Tips for All Literature Databases

AND Retrieves items that contain both terms. Good for combining topics to narrow a search. retina AND regeneration
OR Retrieves items that contain at least one of the terms.  Good for combining synonyms. regeneration OR regrowth
* Retrieves word variants, such as regenerate, regeneration, regenerated regenerat*
" " Retrieves the exact phrase contained by the quotation marks. "retinal neuron"
(   ) Tells search system how to combine terms and in which order.
Article needs to mention "retina" and EITHER regenerat* OR regrow*.		 retina AND (regenerat* OR regrow*)

Search Strategy Development: Example

What articles do you want to find?  Monitoring adherence to anti-retroviral medication among people with HIV in South Africa.

  1. Identify key concepts: anti-retroviral therapy; medication adherence; South Africa
    • If you're familiar with the PICO/PIO/PICOT approach to framing clinical questions, this corresponds to:
      • population: people with HIV in South Africa
      • intervention: anti-retroviral therapy
      • outcome: medication adherence
  2. Generate synonyms and terms to express those concepts in different ways: anti-retroviral, antiretroviral, anti-HIV, ritonavir.
  3. Consider putting quotation marks around exact phrases that you want to find in titles or abstracts: "anti-HIV"
  4. Consider using MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) terms to find articles about your concept: "Anti-Retroviral Agents"[Mesh]     Searching for this MeSH term automatically searches for a number of more specific terms referring to Anti-HIV Agents, HIV protease inhibitors, CCR5 receptor antagonists, etc.
  5. Each concept can be held within a set of parentheses, using OR to find articles mentioning any of the terms listed for the concept: ("anti retroviral" OR antiretroviral OR "anti-HIV" OR "Anti-Retroviral Agents"[Mesh])
  6. Combine your key concepts using AND so each article retrieved by PubMed has to mention each concept: ("anti retroviral" OR antiretroviral OR "anti-HIV" OR "Anti-Retroviral Agents"[Mesh]) AND (adhere* OR complian* OR "Medication Adherence"[Mesh]) AND ("South Africa")