Searching the Literature

By Date of Publication

• Move the slider to limit to the last 1, 5, 10 years or any custom range.
• Often it is necessary to limit to more recent results, especially for evidence tables.
  • Relevant background information, for introduction or background sections, is often found in older seminal articles.

*** DO NOT LIMIT BY TEXT AVAILABILITY ***

• This limiter does not work well for UTHSCSA subscriptions, and even if we do not subscribe there are additional options to get full text.

By Article Type

• Can be useful when searching for reviews.
  • Using the word "review" as a search term also works well for this.
• Does not work well for finding RCTs.
  • Better to just include "random" as a search term.

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Article Language

• Use these to limit to English and/or any other languages you can read, as translating articles is not easy.

Other available filters that I usually avoid:

Species

• This one does not work very well.
• If you are seeing too many animal studies in your PubMed results then try adding this to your search (only for PubMed):

NOT ("Animals"[Mesh] NOT "Humans"[Mesh])

Sex

• This filter does not work well.
  • Many articles are not properly classified under this refinement.
• Use sex terms instead like:
  • female OR woman OR women OR girl*

Age

• This filter does not work well.
  • Many articles are not properly classified under this refinement.
  • Age ranges "classifications" vary among disciplines and authors.
• Use age-related terms instead, like:
  • child* OR boy* OR girl* OR youth* OR minor* OR elementary OR adolescent OR juvenile

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Geographical region

• PubMed does not offer this filter, but CINAHL and Scopus do.
• This filter does not work well.
• Authors frequently do not mention exact location.
• Location is often an unnecessary variable.
  • Many interventions that work in California, Mexico, or China will also work in South Texas.

Using NOT with your search

In addition to AND & OR, terms can be combined with NOT to exclude specific topics or results.

(elderly) AND (falls) AND (acute care) NOT (nursing home)

Use caution when using NOT

• Authors often discuss topics of interest alongside unrelated ones.
  • For example, an article on reducing falls among elderly patients may cover both nursing homes and acute care settings, even if you’re only interested in acute care.