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Searching for observational studies: What does citation tracking add to PubMed? A case study in depression and coronary heart disease

Kuper, H; Nicholson, A; Hemingway, H; (2006) Searching for observational studies: What does citation tracking add to PubMed? A case study in depression and coronary heart disease. BMC Medical Research Methodology , 6 , Article 4. 10.1186/1471-2288-6-4. Green open access

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Abstract

Background PubMed is the most widely used method for searches of the medical literature, but fails to identify many relevant articles. Electronic citation tracking offers an alternative search method. Methods Articles investigating the role of depression in the aetiology and prognosis of coronary heart disease were sought through two methods: a) PubMed, and b) citation tracking where Science Citation Index was searched for all articles which cited ("forward citation tracking") or were cited by ("backward citation tracking") any of the articles in an index review. The number and quality of eligible articles identified by the two methods were compared. Results 50 articles that were not already included in the index review met our inclusion criteria; 11 were identified through Science Citation Index alone, 8 through PubMed alone, and 31 through both methods. Articles identified by Science Citation Index alone were published in higher impact factor journals, were larger and were less likely to show a positive association. Conclusion Science Citation Index identified more eligible articles than PubMed, and these differed qualitatively. Failing to use citation tracking in a systematic review of observational studies may result in bias.

Type: Article
Title: Searching for observational studies: What does citation tracking add to PubMed? A case study in depression and coronary heart disease
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/1471-2288-6-4
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-6-4
Language: English
Additional information: © 2006 Kuper et al; licens ee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the orig inal work is properly cited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/178581
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