Searching the Public Health Journal Literature

Last update: 2 March 2010,
by Maureen Bell

This page provides you with some help with the basics of searching the journal literature. There is a separate page which provides more advanced help for higher degree students. In the advanced help I've concentrated on PubMed (Medline), which is the database you will probably use most frequently. However on this page I've dealt with general principles which you would apply to a database without a thesaurus - such as Scopus.

Do not use the Library catalogue for this search, as it lists journals but not individual journal articles.

Instead you will need to use databases to find details of journal articles on your subject. You'll find a list of databases of interest for public health on my web page, and there is additional help for searching for material for essay topics here.

Database checklist

When using a new database it's a good idea to check its features using the Help option.Life would be much simpler if they all behaved in the same way, but they don't!

First Steps

1. Use of Boolean (logical) operators - in most databases they can be in lower case, but PubMed requires that they are in upper case, so it's important when searching PubMed to use AND, OR, NOT to connect your search terms. PubMed's tutorial gives a clear explanation of how explanation of how Boolean logic works.

2. How do you truncate terms to search for plurals etc.? Some databases such as Academic OneFile have multiple options. PubMed uses only one truncation symbol, and this is how it works.

3. Is there a thesaurus which will allow you to use a standardised language to search? How does it work?
PubMed has a thesaurus which is called MeSH - which is simply an acronym for Medical Subject Headings.

4. How do you search for articles by an author, or in a particular journal?

5. How do you display references, or mark them for saving, printing, or emailing to yourself?

6. Can you link to the full text of articles, or will you need to find print articles in the Library?

Search Strategy

Before you search for information you'll need to formulate a search strategy. Below are some tips on how to do this.

1. Identify the key concepts .

2. Work out alternative terms for these concepts.

3. Decide whether you want to restrict your search to a certain population or group

4. Decide whether you want to restrict your search to a particular type of article - eg. systematic reviews.

5. Remember that practice helps, and that there is no such thing as the perfect search - a strategy which may be fine for an essay may be totally inadequate for a thesis topic.

6. You may find it helps to clarify your thinking if you use a logic grid, in which you group related concepts or synonyms - see the example below

An example

Supposing you want to find information about socioeconomic factors and weight problems in adolescent girls. Below are some possible options for searching. As there are four distinct concepts involved in this search we will use four columns.

You would need to OR the individual words in each column, and then AND the groups of words together - remembering to use parentheses to preserve the logic of your search. Click here to check on Boolean logic (the use of logical operators, and the importance of parentheses in search strategies).

("socioeconomic factors" or "social class" or employment or poverty or income or unemployment) and ("weight gain" or "weight loss" or obesity) and (adolesc* or teen*) and (girl* or female*)

If you wanted to exclude articles that looked at people of all ages, you might add not adult* at the end of your search.

Search results

The purpose of searching a database is to get a list of citations telling you where to look for articles on your subject.

Finding the full journal article

A database citation may give a link to a full electronic article, often in .pdf format which you can save or print directly.
If there is no link, or a faulty link, the Library may still have the journal in electronic or paper format - so always search the Library catalogue under the journal title. There is a demonstration on how to do this in our library tutorial.