Before combining an NHP filter with a topic search string, researchers must thoughtfully determine and test what topic-relevant terms are necessary to include. Searches conducted in PubMed and PsycINFO should include relevant index terms that can be identified from the Medical Subject Headers (MeSH) database or the APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, respectively. The topic search string should also include any topic-relevant terms to be searched in the title and abstract of publications (TIAB terms), which primarily retrieve publications that have not received an index term yet. Index terms and TIAB terms are formatted using the syntax of the corresponding source and combined with the Boolean operator 'OR'.
Below we provide an example for a topic search strings on cortisol related studies (index terms are indicated in italics). Note that Web of Science does not have index terms as this platform has no associated thesaurus.
PubMed
hydrocortisone[mh] OR cortiso*[tiab] OR hydrocortiso*[tiab] OR epicortiso*[tiab] OR glucocortico*[tiab] |
PsycINFO via EBSCOhost
DE(hydrocortisone) OR TX(cortiso* OR hydrocortiso* OR epicortiso* OR glucocortico*) |
Web of Science
TS=(cortiso* OR hydrocortiso* OR epicortiso* OR glucocortico*) |
To find publications involving NHPs on a particular topic, search filters from filterNHP and the topic search string should each be surrounded by parentheses and combined together with the Boolean operator 'AND'. Below are examples of an NHP search filter for the genus Macaca combined with the topic search strings for cortisol related studies (see above). Green text indicates the NHP search filter and purple text indicates the topic search string; index terms are indicated in italics.
PubMed
("macaca"[mh] OR "cynomolgus"[tiab] OR "macaca"[tiab] OR "macaque's"[tiab] OR "macaque"[tiab] OR "macaques"[tiab] OR "rhesus monkey*"[tiab]) AND (hydrocortisone[mh] OR cortiso*[tiab] OR hydrocortiso*[tiab] OR epicortiso*[tiab] OR glucocortico*[tiab]) |
PsycINFO via EBSCOhost
(TX("cynomolgus" OR "macaca" OR "macaque's" OR "macaque" OR "macaques" OR "rhesus monkey*")) AND (DE(hydrocortisone) OR TX(cortiso* OR hydrocortiso* OR epicortiso* OR glucocortico*)) |
Web of Science
(TS=("cynomolgus" OR "macaca" OR "macaque's" OR "macaque" OR "macaques" OR "rhesus monkey*")) AND (TS=(cortiso* OR hydrocortiso* OR epicortiso* OR glucocortico*)) |