How to Peer Review Search Strategies

How to Peer Review Search Strategies

I recently did a short course on "How to Peer Review Search Strategies". This was offered by INSTATS - an organization that offers several excellent research related courses. What is Peer reviewing of search strategies? In India, we have a lacuna of knowledge about search strategies and the need for them to be structured. Most often very little thought is given to the strategy and it is done in an ad-hoc manner. Peer reviewing is something no one even thinks about.. The six hour session over two evenings - run by two expert Information Professionals - Carol Lefebvre - and…
Read More
Unity is strength

Unity is strength

You must have read this story as a child. About an old man who lived with three sons - all hard workers but fought all the time. The old man tried a lot to unite them but he failed. And finally decided to teach them a lesson. He made them break single sticks from a bundle and they could do that easily. Then he gave them a full bundle and they could break them only when they worked together. I now address all those who are registered for our ELearning courses, and have not worked on them. Do you remember…
Read More
A little known PubMed search feature

A little known PubMed search feature

At the end of 2022 PubMed launched the "Proximity operator" feature. At the end of 2023, it would not be surprising to find that no one in India (or only a few) is aware of this. Proximity operators - available in most databases that we have to pay for, make searching much more relevant, when we search for terms like "Under developed countries". When we search these with the tags [ti] or [tiab], we are searching for the term as a phrase. When we search them with a proximity operator, then we are searching for the terms being near each…
Read More