Journals@Ovid – Targeted Searching in Title, Abstract and Keyword Fields

Background

Journals@Ovid is an aggregated online database of all the journals available via the Ovid platform. These journals are from a variety of sources, principally, Lippincott®, Williams & Wilkins (LWW), from societies as well as from partnering publishers. The actual journals in full-text that you have access to will depend upon the selection of journal packages (2), groups of journals or individual publications your institution has subscribed to. Be sure to check with your librarian.

Accessible via the Ovid platform, collections of full-text journals as well as single publications can be searched on and across using Ovid's powerful search functionality. Journal content can be displayed and retrieved in PDF format. Or alternatively in the browser-based Ovid Full Text format, which in turn facilitates targeted navigation through the journal's content using the Outline feature. This format also enables the provision of information sharing and export via Tools. 

Journals@Ovid – Facts and Figures (1)

• Journals@Ovid is an aggregated online database of hundreds of scientific, technical, and medical journals.
• The Ovid Full Text Collections are subsets of journals combined for local access.
• The journals covered are from over 50 publishers and societies.
• Each journal is nevertheless available by individual subscription.
• Purchase of any of Ovid's Full Text journals, provides access to all the bibliographic citations in the database.
• The bibliographic citation information includes the title, references and abstract (where available) for each database record, all of which are searchable.

Training Session Programme

This Learning Pathway series of training modules draws upon the content and teaching approaches in and behind the learning resource OvidGO! (3). Constructed around a selection of focused searches, the training programme has been designed to achieve the following two objectives,

1. to introduce the database, Journals@Ovid, drawing upon where helpful, parallels and comparisons with Ovid MEDLINE,
2. to discuss, demonstrate and practice the key features and functionality of the database Journals@Ovid. 

(1). Journals@Ovid Database Guide
https://ovidsp.dc1.ovid.com/ovid-new-b/ovidweb.cgi?&S=876bba95-4fa0-485f-95c9-386b9ccfaab1%7cmain&Database+Field+Guide=53

(2). Journals@Ovid
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/ovid/platforms-products/journals

(3). OvidGO! Learning Resource
https://tools.ovid.com/ovidgo/

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The database record of a journal article, of the type on Journals@Ovid, is made up of sub-units of information that correspond to equivalent items of information that make up the journal publication itself. So for example, journal articles usually carry a title. This information will be indexed in the database record of the article under an item called ‘Title’. This item of information is also referred to as a database or ‘field’. In the case of ‘Title’ it also has the abbreviation ‘TI’ for both display and reference purposes. In the context of actively searching however, the abbreviation, TI (regardless of upper or lower case) placed between periods, i.e. .ti. after a term, as in diabetes.ti. becomes a command. In this case, the instruction to Ovid being, find all the occurrences of the term ‘diabetes’ in the Title field of the database, Journals @Ovid.

Field searching on Ovid is a very effective and reliable way to locate and target information within a repository of millions of documents. Search queries can be made up of a variety of such database fields which can also be used singularly or in combinations.

This Focused Search introduces and demonstrates three of the most commonly used database field searches in Journals@Ovid.   

TITLE (TI)
The Title (TI) field contains the English language version of the title as it appears in the journal. Small words in the title such as "of" or "the" display in documents but do not appear in the title index. That said, the word "a", which is a ‘stopword’ in other fields, can be searched in the title field.

ABSTRACT (AB)
The journal publication’s abstract is captured in the database’s Abstract (AB) field and usually summarises the content of the document and generally describes the background, methods, results, and conclusions. Both English and foreign language abstracts are searchable using AB in the format  term.ab. Similarly, small words such as "of" or "the" display in documents but are not searchable and do not appear in the Abstract (AB) index.

KEYWORD (KW)
When authors assign keywords to their publication, these keywords are captured in the database field Author Keywords which has the abbreviation ‘KW’. This field exists only for documents where the author has specifically assigned keywords.
 

Points to note:

• Ovid is able to search for complete phrases just as well as single words, specific terms or abbreviations.
• Singular and/or plural forms of words can be captured using special characters called wildcards. So, for example in the expression literac$.ti. , the $ character instructs Ovid to look for both ‘literacy’ and ‘literacies’ in the titles of journals.
• Fields can be strung together in a search expression to tell Ovid to look for the term or terms in the fields as stated. So, for example diabetes.ti,ab,kw. will search for the word ‘diabetes’ in the fields, title, abstract and keyword – all in one search.
• Built up systematically, search expressions can then be combined using the Boolean operators for more specific results.
• In time, with experience and practice you can also enter all the component parts of the search, i.e. the terms and phrases together with the required fields as commands - all in one search expression.
   

Instructions:

1. Logon to Ovid, select Journals@Ovid <To Present>, select the Advanced Search / Keyword mode.
2. Enter the search lines for this focused search as listed below.
3. Alternatively, having not yet logged on,  <Click here> to run this focused search above in Ovid.
    

literacy.ti. [Entry term(s): Single word]
literac$.ti.
(health and literac$).ti.
(health and literac$).ti,ab.
(health and literac$).ti,ab,kw.
information overload.ti. [Entry term(s): Single phrase]
information overload.ab.
information overload.kw.
information overload.ti,ab.
information overload.ti,ab,kw.
5 and 10 [Entry term(s): Combination of previous concepts]
(health and literac$ and information overload).ti,ab,kw.
 

Questions:

1. Do all the documents in your final results’ set contain an abstract?
2. If not, how could you isolate these specific documents?
3. Would your search run equally well in Ovid MEDLINE? If so, why?

 

Search Stategy

Copy Strategy Launch Search

Reviewers

Primary: Michael Fanning

Secondary: Charlotte Viken

Review Date: 2025-05-19

Expiry Date: 2026-05-19

Original search produced by:

Ovid Training Team

References:

OvidGO! / Skills Videos / General Introduction
What is a bibliographic database?
What is the structure of a database?
What is Ovid MEDLINE?
What are Boolean Operators?
What are wildcards?
Subject heading searching

Citation:

OvidGO! Portal. Focused Searches: Journals@Ovid – Targeted Searching in Title, Abstract and Keyword Fields [Internet]. London (UK): Ovid Training Team (Editors); 2025 [updated 2 March 2024; cited 10 March 2025]. Available from: https://tools.ovid.com/ovidgo/searches/view.php?id=125