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On October 13, 1982, the Department made its annual republication of notices of systems of records to meet the requirements of 5 U.S.C. 552(e)(4). In order to assist the public, the Department publishes a consolidated lists of systems numbers, names, and Federal Register (FR) page numbers for the October 13 issue, as well as a subject/key word index.
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Journal coverage is one factor that affects the retrieval of relevant information from bibliographic databases. The aims of this study were to investigate the coverage of databases for psychiatry journals, and to assess the overlap between databases. Psychiatry journals were identified using Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory and then analysed to see which bibliographic databases indexed the most journals. A total of 213 abstracting and indexing services were listed as indexing at least one of the 977 psychiatry journals identified. The four most frequently cited databases (PSYCLIT, EMBASE, BIOSIS and MEDLINE) indexed 506 (52%) of the psychiatry journals. Of these 506 journals, PSYCLIT indexed 367 (73%), EMBASE 337 (67%), BIOSIS 243 (48%) and MEDLINE 236 (47%). Combining the databases with the highest yields (PSYCLIT and EMBASE) increased the number of journals indexed to 461 (91%). The four databases combined accounted for 90% of all psychiatry journals found to be indexed by at least one abstracting and indexing service. More than 400 journals were not indexed at all. Variations in the overlap between PSYCLIT, EMBASE, BIOSIS and MEDLINE, and the high proportion (35%) of journals indexed in only one of these four databases emphasize the importance of searching more than one or even two databases to ensure optimal coverage of the literature.
Selective dissemination of information to individuals provides a new and promising method for keeping abreast of current scientific information. Since SDI services are directed to the information needs of each individual, they are a significant step beyond grouporiented services and products, which require considerable expenditure of effort by each user as he sorts useful information from trash. However, SDI systems do require a high degree of precision in matching scientists against documents. They must operate more efficiently and economically than many current systems which occasionally provide a useful item of information to users. To meet these stringent requirements for quality, precision, efficiency, and economy, more research must be devoted to comparing and improving indexing methods, which are the basic component of all information storage and retrieval systems. It is incredible that so much money has been spent on the development and operation of scientific information systems before basic data on the comparative performance of various indexing methods have been gathered, analyzed, and confirmed by multiple investigators. The design of an effective information system would seem to require this type of basic knowledge, just as basic properties of alternative materials must be known before an engineer can design a building, bridge, or factory. Yet, except for the few studies mentioned in the previous section, research on indexing methods has been greatly neglected. Bourne's comment about studies of indexing languages is still an appropriate description of the situation: "In almost all the experimental reports, the investigator worked with an indexing language different than that of other experimenters. Consequently, no one has ever had his test results verified, or expanded, or made more precise by another experimenter" (47). Most existing information systems are based on keyword indexing, with concepts broken into isolated terms during input operations and recombined to synthesize the original concept during search and retrieval. Such systems tend to involve imprecise indexing, with a high level of "noise" in retrieved documents, difficult search strategy involving extensive post-coordination, and lengthy, complex computer manipulations. This situation reflects the fact that many producers of indexed data originally focused the design of their systems on the production of a published product with entries printed under short, concise index headings. Production of magnetic tapes as a by-product of the publication process, and their use for retrospective searching or for SDI services, was a much later development, almost an afterthought. Yet use of these tapes is growing so rapidly that it may be time to redesign the tape-producing systems, with ease of tape use for SDI services and retrospective searching as the primary consideration, and with publication of abstract and index bulletins or title listings relegated to secondary importance (49). The use of keywords to index documents creates a high degree of disorganization in information search and retrieval operations: Information is scattered under the many different terms that can be used to index different aspects of a concept. If the large-scale, comprehensive abstracting and indexing services were based on enumerative classifications with assignment of documents to logical hierarchical categories at the time of initial indexing, then many of the specialized information centers (50) and the 1300 abstracting and indexing services (3) would be unnecessary, and much of the reindexing and reprocessing of documents, the repackaging and reworking of abstracts and index data, and the resulting overlap and duplication characteristic of current information processing could be terminated. Partly because of the disorganization resulting from keyword indexing, the cost of a 5-year retrospective search of information on just one data base on magnetic tapes is a major investment (16). The effort and cost required to find a few items of useful information scattered among 1,285,000 abstracts indexed on 116 full reels of magnetic tape (11 million characters per reel) which will be needed for the 5-year Eighth Collective Index to Chemical Abstracts (1967-1971) (51) staggers the imagination. In contrast, when HICLASS systems based on enumerative hierarchical classifications are used, concepts that might be useful for later retrieval are identified and related items of information are grouped together during the indexing process. These enumerative classifications, with single-hit matching, make it possible to index and retrieve ideas as intact units and to perform simple sequential searches of the very small segment of a file that deals with a given topic (31). The experiments at both the Science Information Exchange and the National Cancer Institute, as described in this article, demonstrate that automated HICLASS systems are feasible and can operate at a very satisfactory level of performance. Although considerable effort may be required for the development and constant updating of detailed enumerative classifications, HICLASS categories may facilitate organization of data at the time of input, improve the precision of matching documents with users, and greatly simplify search logic and computer manipulations. If so, then output savings and performance would more than justify input costs, and the development and use of enumerative classifications would be a better solution to information problems than the current keyword-and-coordination approach. It is time to think beyond the ease of the single input step in information systems and to take a hard look at ways of easing retrieval problems for the multitude of information systems that process the indexed data (52). Indexing effort is expended only once, whereas search and retrieval effort is required by every user of a system. If information were better analyzed and organized during input operations, if more basic research were devoted to the effect of indexing methods on the performance of information systems, and if more emphasis were placed on the quality and usefulness of retrieved information, then the magnitude of problems related to the storage and retrieval of scientific information might be considerably reduced.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: Budget pressures, combined with the growing availability of resources, dictate careful examination of reference use. Two studies were conducted at the University of Maryland Health Sciences Library to examine this issue. A twelve-month reshelving study determined use by title and discipline; a simultaneous study analyzed print abstract and index use in an electronic environment. METHODOLOGY: Staff electronically recorded statistics for unshelved reference books, coded the collection by discipline, and tracked use by school. Oral surveys administered to reference room abstract and index users focused on title usage, user demographics, and stated reason for use. RESULTS: Sixty-five and a half percent of reference collection titles were used. Medical titles received the most use, but, in the context of collection size, dentistry and nursing titles used the greatest percentage of their collections. At an individual title level, medical textbooks and drug handbooks were most used. Users of abstracts and indexes were primarily campus nursing and medical students who preferred print resources. CONCLUSION: The monograph data will guide reference expenditures in canceling little-used standing orders, expanding most-used portions of the collection, and analyzing underused sections. The abstract and index survey identified the following needs: targeting instruction, contacting faculty who assign print resources, increasing the number of computer workstations, and installing signs linking databases to print equivalents.
PURPOSE: To conduct a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) and pregnancy and STD prevention. DATA SOURCES: Computer database search (Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts [ASSIA], Biological Abstracts, Criminal Justice Abstracts, CINAHL-Allied Health, Current Contents, Current Index to Journals in Education, Education Index, ERIC, Excerpta Medica, Family Index, Index Medicus, Medline, Multicultural Education Abstracts, PsychInfo, Psychological Abstracts, Research Alert, Social Science Citation Index, Social Work Abstracts, and Sociological Abstracts), and manual journal search. STUDY INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION CRITERIA: All English, peer-reviewed, original articles on the TTM as it relates to pregnancy and STD prevention published prior to December 31, 2001, were included. Editorials, commentaries, thesis/dissertations, unpublished studies, technical reports, and books were not included. DATA EXTRACTION METHODS: Articles were categorized as Intervention, Population (stage distribution), or Validation studies. Within each category, articles were subdivided into groups, summarized, and analyzed. DATA SYNTHESIS: The 32 articles reviewed included 9 intervention studies, 11 population studies, and 12 validation studies. Studies represented a variety of U.S. populations of a broad demographic range. Evidence both for and against criterion-related and construct validity of the TTM was found. MAJOR CONCLUSIONS: Age, partner type, gender, reasons for engaging in safer sex behaviors (i.e., pregnancy vs. disease prevention), self-efficacy, sexual assertiveness, and perceived advantages and disadvantages of condom use were related to stage of change. The use of the TTM to reduce risk of pregnancy and STDs is a relatively new, but important, area of research. However, because of the wide-ranging differences in methodologies and samples, no strong conclusions about its effectiveness can yet be made.
OBJECTIVE: This paper reviews 28 studies on the epidemiology of homicide committed by mentally disordered people, taken from recent international academic literature. METHODS: The studies included were identified as part of a wider systematic review of the epidemiology of offending combined with mental disorder. The main databases searched were Embase, Medline, HealthStar, Psyclit, Mental Health Abstracts, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, and Criminology Penology and Police Science Abstracts. A comprehensive search was made for studies published since 1990, supplemented with key studies from the 1980s identified through citation tracing and personal contacts. RESULTS: A summary is given in tabular form of the content and quality of each study. There is then discussion of the studies in eight categories: descriptive studies, studies of trends, comparative studies amongst homicide offenders, amongst prisoners and including general populations, studies of homicide of relatives, follow-up studies, and studies of recidivism. CONCLUSIONS: There is an association of homicide with mental disorder, most particularly with certain manifestations of schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder and drug or alcohol abuse. However, the quality of epidemiological research in this area is not adequate to answer key questions, and prediction of potential for homicide remains elusive. Further research is needed.
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Primary intracerebral hemorrhage (PICH) is a devastating illness with high early mortality. Hypertension is a major risk factor both for ischemic cerebrovascular disease and for intracranial hemorrhage. Survivors of PICH are at risk for both recurrent hemorrhage and ischemic cerebrovascular disease. We sought to determine the rate of recurrence of ICH or cerebral ischemia in a cohort of PICH patients at the Toronto Hospital, Toronto, Canada. METHODS: A retrospective search of computerized hospital records from 1986 to 1996 for patients with a discharge diagnosis of intracerebral hemorrhage (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision-Clinical Modification [ICD-9-CM] code 431) was conducted to identify the index cases. Charts were abstracted for demographic and clinical characteristics. CT scans, MR scans, or radiologist reports were reviewed. To determine recurrence, the database was linked to the Ontario Provincial Government Vital Statistics Registry and to the Canadian Institute for Health Information database of hospital discharge abstracts. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify predictive factors for mortality after PICH. A Cox proportional hazards model was fitted to identify predictive factors for recurrent ICH or stroke. RESULTS: A total of 746 charts were identified by computer search. After abstraction, 423 index patients with PICH were identified. Of these, 27.4% died in the first 30 days of their admission. Predictors of death were age, intraventricular rupture of hemorrhage, and trilobar hemorrhage. The recurrence rate for PICH was 2.4% (95% CI 1.4% to 3. 9%) per year, whereas the recurrence rate for ischemic cerebrovascular disease was 3.0% (95% CI 1.8% to 4.7%) per year. The only significant predictor of readmission for ICH was lobar location of the index hemorrhage, with a hazard ratio of 3.8 (95% CI 1.2 to 12.0). CONCLUSIONS: PICH has a high 30-day mortality rate. Survival from the initial insult portends a moderate risk of recurrence of 2. 4% per year for PICH and 3.0% per year for ischemic cerebrovascular disease. Patients with PICH are at risk for both ischemic stroke or TIA and recurrent hemorrhage; thus, PICH may be a marker for ischemic stroke. Patients with lobar hemorrhage have a 3.8-fold increased risk of recurrent ICH.
Holmes, et al. in 1988 compiled 61 studies in an updated bibliography of behavioral science in undergraduate and graduate medical education. Since then, 64 additional studies of behavioral science in medical education have been published and abstracted in Index Medicus and Psychological Abstracts, the sources for the bibliography.
This study is an effort to determine possible service performance levels in hospital libraries based on access to the scholarly record of medicine through selected lists of clinical journals and indexing and abstracting journals. The study was designed to test a methodology as well as to provide data for planning and management decisions for health science libraries. Findings and conclusions cover the value of a core collection of journals, length of journal files, performance of certain bibliographic instruments in citation verification, and the implications of study data for library planning and management.
This study is an application of the relationship of serial articles published to serial articles cited, developed in theory in the author's "Statistical Bibliography in the Health Sciences" (Bulletin 50: 450-461, July 1962). A ranked list of the indexes of significance of most of the serials indexed in Current List of Medical Literature was derived and erected from 21,000 citations secured in a random sampling of 1962 and 1961 biomedical journals regularly received in the Yale Medical Library. The author measures the gross indexing effectiveness of Current List against his indexes of significance, offers his method and results as means to reach objective standards for indexing and abstracting, and projects his results as measures of general value of the serials analyzed.
The purpose of this study, part of the Medical Library Association (MLA) Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section's project to map the allied health literature, is to identify the core journals in the field of speech-language pathology and to identify indexing and abstracting services that provide access to these journals. Four representative speech-language pathology journals were selected and subjected to citation analysis to determine which journals were cited and how many times each was cited. Bradford's Law of Scattering was applied to the resulting list of journals to identify the core journals of this discipline. Six indexing and abstracting services were selected and scanned to determine coverage for the speech-language pathology core journals. The core journals received broad coverage in the health sciences and social sciences indexing and abstracting databases surveyed, although there was no one database that provided complete coverage of all core journals. The full Current Contents database provides the most extensive coverage of core journals. For individuals without access to the complete Current Contents database, a combined search of both MEDLINE and PsycINFO provides very comprehensive coverage of core journals.
Writing an abstract presents a unique challenge to any author. It requires brevity of the written word, conciseness of thought and accuracy of presentation. A structured abstract is the most important starting point for a well written dental article. Shanghai Journal of Stomatology, a Chinese national journal of oral medicine, oral and maxillofacial surgery, prosthodontics, orthodontics, oral pathology, endodontics, oral radiology, etc, has been included and indexed in Chemical Abstracts, Index Medicus and MEDLINE. This peer reviewed refereed journal demands Chinese and English abstracts of high quality for all manuscripts. Each manuscript should provide qualified abstracts for citation and indexing, which are written in standard English using the correct terms, sentences and grammar. Structured abstracts about 500 characters are required for clinical articles, clinical reports, basic scientific articles; while indicative abstracts (summary) are mandatory to short communications and case reports as well as review articles. Generally, the abstracts should be written in the past tense and passive voice (in the third person), with exception of conclusion(s), which can be in the primary tense and active voice. The structured abstracts are consisted of PURPOSE (S), METHODS, CONCLUSION (S), and CONCLUSION (S), which should offer the important information on the number of the subjects, methods of grouping and statistics, database attained, P values, etc. The conclusion (s) must be detailed rather than conceptive. This editorial introduces the ins and outs of writing an English abstracts acceptable for publication.
BACKGROUND: We would expect information on adverse drug reactions in randomised clinical trials to be easily retrievable from specific searches of electronic databases. However, complete retrieval of such information may not be straightforward, for two reasons. First, not all clinical drug trials provide data on the frequency of adverse effects. Secondly, not all electronic records of trials include terms in the abstract or indexing fields that enable us to select those with adverse effects data. We have determined how often automated search methods, using indexing terms and/or textwords in the title or abstract, would fail to retrieve trials with adverse effects data. METHODS: We used a sample set of 107 trials known to report frequencies of adverse drug effects, and measured the proportion that (i) were not assigned the appropriate adverse effects indexing terms in the electronic databases, and (ii) did not contain identifiable adverse effects textwords in the title or abstract. RESULTS: Of the 81 trials with records on both MEDLINE and EMBASE, 25 were not indexed for adverse effects in either database. Twenty-six trials were indexed in one database but not the other. Only 66 of the 107 trials reporting adverse effects data mentioned this in the abstract or title of the paper. Simultaneous use of textword and indexing terms retrieved only 82/107 (77%) papers. CONCLUSIONS: Specific search strategies based on adverse effects textwords and indexing terms will fail to identify nearly a quarter of trials that report on the rate of drug adverse effects.
BACKGROUND: Highly active antiretroviral therapy is associated with improved health outcomes for people living with HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, full therapeutic benefit from HAART may require near-perfect adherence to prescribed regimens. OBJECTIVES: To determine the effectiveness of patient support and education interventions for improving adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in people living with HIV and AIDS. SEARCH STRATEGY: Studies were identified using AIDSLINE, MEDLINE, CINAHL, HEALTHSTAR, PSYCHLIT, SOCIOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL ABSTRACTS, SCIENCE CITATION INDEX, EMBASE, and abstracts from global AIDS meetings, ICAAC, and other major meetings from January 1996 to April 1999. Further information was sought through contact with authors, reference lists, and Collaborative Review Group databases. SELECTION CRITERIA: To be included, studies had to describe a supportive or educational intervention to improve adherence to a HAART regimen in HIV positive patients, and include a comparison group. Eligible HAART regimens were defined as consisting of at least three anti-HIV drugs one of which must be a protease inhibitor or non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor. At least one measure of adherence was also required. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Data on study design, participants, interventions, and outcomes were extracted from the reports onto specifically designed data collection forms by at least two reviewers. MAIN RESULTS: One study satisfied the eligibility criteria. It compared a pharmacist-led intervention consisting of educational counseling and availability of follow-up telephone support with conventional dispensing of HAART pills. This intervention significantly improved adherence to HAART, and adherence to HAART significantly predicted undetectable viral load at 24 weeks. However, participating in the intervention did not significantly predict a subsequently undetectable viral load at 24 weeks. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS: Implications for practice Currently a pharmacist-led program of educational and supportive counseling is the only available intervention which has been shown in a controlled study to improve adherence to HAART, with less evidence that viral load is subsequently reduced. Implications for research Controlled trials are urgently needed to determine which interventions can significantly improve adherence to HAART. Whether interventions that improve adherence also suppress viral load and improve clinical outcomes should also be considered.