Literature search tips - ADJ

As any clinical librarian will know, there is a wealth of literature search methods out there. With this in mind, we have decided to start a new blog series sharing top search tips, which we hope will help!

Today's tip comes from one of our Clinical Librarians, Sarah Sutton and the focus is on using the "adj" connector in HDAS and Ovid.

If you use adj and put a number next to it, then it will search for the two words you put either side of adj in any order. So, diabet* adj3 ketoacid* would pull “diabetics who suffered from ketoacidosis” in an abstract or title and also “ketoacidotic attacks in diabetes”. Of course it wouldn’t pull DKA!

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share or pop your thoughts in the comments field below.

Happy literature searching!

UHL Clinical Librarian Service