HOW TO RESEARCH YOUR DENTISTRY ESSAY
7. Finding articles on your topic

Individual journal articles are NOT listed in library catalogues. They are listed in periodical indexes (such as Medline), which can be marvellous tools for finding articles on a given subject.

Understanding how periodical indexes are created will help you understand how to use them:

After an article is published, an indexer records the article's title, author, and language, the type of study, the age group studied, and so on. Most important, the indexer figures out what the article is about and assigns the appropriate subject headings.

EXAMPLE: HOW TWO ARTICLES WERE INDEXED

FIRST ARTICLE:

Title: "Evaluation of a bioadhesive device for the management of aphthous ulcers"

A Medline indexer, after analyzing this article, assigned the following official Medical Subject Headings to it:

  • Stomatitis, Aphthous
  • Cyanoacrylates
  • Tissue Adhesives
because the article is about all of these topics. He or she also assigned the Publication Type Clinical Trial, since that's the type of study described in the article.
SECOND ARTICLE:

Title: "A child with aphthae and diarrhoea"

A Medline indexer, after analyzing this article, assigned the following official Medical Subject Headings to it:

  • Stomatitis, Aphthous
  • Behcet Syndrome
  • Diarrhea
because all three of these topics are discussed in the article. He or she also assigned the Publication Type Case Reports, since this article reports a case.
How would the above indexing affect your search results?
  • If you were to do a search in Medline for the Subject Stomatitis, Aphthous, you would find both of the above articles.
  • If you searched for the Subject Stomatitis, Aphthous AND the Subject Tissue Adhesives (i.e., if you combined these two Subjects in order to find articles which discussed them both), you would find the first article, but not the second.
  • If you searched for the Subject Stomatitis, Aphthous, limited to the Publication Type Case Reports, you would find the second article but not the first.

(This example is simplified -- Medline indexers actually include lots of other information you can search for as well.)

Where would we be without indexers?

Authors use a variety of terms to describe a single topic; in the example above, the author of the first article used the words "aphthous ulcers" in the title, whereas the author of the second article used "aphthae". Without a human indexer and official subject headings, you would have had to guess what words the authors might have used, and you would have had to do "keyword" searches for all the possible synonyms ("aphthous ulcers", "aphthae", "ulcerative stomatitis", etc.). But thanks to human indexers, who use official subject headings, you can find all the articles on the same concept, regardless of what vocabulary the authors happened to use.

Next section: Deciphering Citations

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All contents copyright © 2004, Margaret Fulford. All rights reserved.