Quick

Quick Search is the default homepage for Embase.

It has been engineered to be a very simple search interface that produces maximum search results with minimal user effort.  It is ideal for quick literature checks, and is a good starting point for searchers who are not already experienced at using Embase.

Quick Search offers:

  • A text box for typing words or phrases.  Enclose mult-word phrases in quotation marks (see below).  An autocomplete function points to possible Emtree thesaurus term(s) for the first word entered.
  • Extensive search for the broadest possible retrieval.
  • Search Publications from:  to specify individual publication years or ranges. 

Simply click the Search button to execute the search.

 

Extensive search

This option ensures the largest possible retrieval of hits because it performs three functions simultaneously:

  • Mapping: A word or phrase is automatically matched (or mapped) to its corresponding Emtree thesaurus term, and the search is done in the Disease Index Term and Drug Index Term fields.
  • Explosion: If an term has any more specific, or narrower, index terms within the Emtree thesaurus, they are also automatically retrieved.
  • Keyword search: Word or phrases are searched as written in every field within a database record; can include article title, abstract, drug / device name, author address, etc.

The results of each of these functions are automatically combined in a Boolean OR search.

Example: 

With extensive search on, a search on ‘myocardial infarction’ is run with a single click in this way:

  • ‘Myocardial infarction’ maps to the Emtree term heart infarction, so papers indexed with this term are retrieved.
  • Within Emtree, heart infarction has several narrower terms: acute heart infarction, Dressler syndrome, heart muscle necrosis, heart right ventrical infarction, silent myocardial infarction, etc.  These are all picked up with an “explosion” of the thesaurus tree for this term.
  • The phrase ‘myocardial infarction’ is also found in other parts of the database record, including the title, abstract and elsewhere.
  • All of these search components are combined with a Boolean OR to create a single, unified set of citations.

Extensive search is on by default.  You can check the box to disable it whenever necessary; this will turn Emtree mapping and explosion off, and will look for your search words or terms anywhere within a database record simply as “free text” words.

Additional tools and options for searching can be found in Advanced, Drug, Disease, Article, Journals and Authors. 

 

Notes

  • Very important:  Enclose multi-word phrases in quotation marks; they can be either single or double quotes, as long as they match each other.  This will ensure your phrase is searched as words adjacent to each other, in the order given.  For instance, ‘drug resistance’ retrieves:

chronic myeloid leukemia (drug resistance, drug therapy)

If quotes are omitted, the words are processed with a Boolean AND operator, which can result in a large quantity of irrelevant results (“false hits”), since the terms can occur at some distance apart from each other within a database record.  Drug resistance (without quotes) can result in:

“Inflammation of the brainstem microvasculature may increase vascular resistance ...” (in the abstract) and “essential hypertension (drug therapy, etiology) (in the indexing).

  • Boolean operators, wildcards, proximity operators and field labels can be used in Quick Search for additional flexibility and precision:

diabetes:ti,ab and (sugar or glucose) and monitor*