An increasing number of biomedical journals are being made available for online searching via full-text, that is, the complete text of each article is sorted and any article may be retrieved by a single word or combinations of words contained therein. This represents a dramatic increase in points of access to information in these journals. In some cases, however, full-text availability may present a surfeit of access points and hinder the identification of the most relevant documents. Controlled index terms, on the other hand, represent judgments regarding the important concepts in documents, and judgments are subject to human error. This project is designed to test the relative efficacy of index terms and full-text for the retrieval of documents in those MEDLINE journals for which full-text searching is also available. Information requests will be solicited from the Departments of Medicine, Surgery, Family and Community Medicine, and Child Health at the University of Missouri-Columbia Health Sciences Center. Trained and experienced searchers will search both the MEDLINE database and the corresponding full-text databases for relevant citations. All citations retrieved will be evaluated for relevance by the requesters. Results will be tabulated and analyzed to determine which of the retrieval methods is more effective in identifying relevant bibliographic citations, why full- text systems miss some relevant documents, and whether one method is more effective than the other for certain kinds of questions. In addition, data will be analyzed to determine how often relevant items in full-text systems could have been identified with title and abstract words alone.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01LM004605-01
Application #
3373857
Study Section
(SRC)
Project Start
1987-04-01
Project End
1989-03-31
Budget Start
1987-04-01
Budget End
1988-03-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
1987
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Missouri-Columbia
Department
Type
Schools of Library Science
DUNS #
112205955
City
Columbia
State
MO
Country
United States
Zip Code
65211
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Sievert, M E; McKinin, E J; Johnson, E D et al. (1996) Beyond relevance--characteristics of key papers for clinicians: an exploratory study in an academic setting. Bull Med Libr Assoc 84:351-8
Johnson, E D; Sievert, M C; McKinin, E J (1995) Retrieving research studies: a comparison of bibliographic and full-text versions of the New England Journal of Medicine. Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care :846-50
McKinin, E J; Sievert, M E; Collins, B R (1991) Currency of full-text medical journals: CCML and MEDIS vs. MEDLINE. Bull Med Libr Assoc 79:282-7
Sievert, M C; McKinin, E J; Johnson, E D et al. (1991) Retrieval from full-text medical literature: the dream & the reality. Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care :348-52
McKinin, E J; Sievert, M; Johnson, E D et al. (1991) The Medline/full-text research project. J Am Soc Inf Sci 42:297-307