Evidence map›Paper›PMID 27215352›Full record

ArticleBMC medical informatics and decision making2016

Reengineering of MeSH thesauri for term selection to optimize literature retrieval and knowledge reconstruction in support of stem cell research.

Yan Su, James Andrews, Hong Huang, Yue Wang, Liangliang Kong, Peter Cannon, Ping Xu

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Yan SuShanghai Information Center for Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
James AndrewsSchool of Information, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA.
Hong HuangSchool of Information, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA.
Yue WangShanghai Information Center for Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Liangliang KongShanghai Information Center for Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Peter CannonSchool of Information, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA.
Ping XuShanghai Information Center for Life Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. xuping@sibs.ac.cn.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundPubMed is a widely used database for scientists to find biomedical-related literature. Due to the complexity of the selected research subject and its interdisciplinary nature, as well as the exponential growth in the number of disparate pieces of biomedical literature, it is an overwhelming challenge for scientists to define the right search strategies and quickly locate all related information. Specialized subsets and groupings of controlled vocabularies, such as Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), can enhance information retrieval in specialized domains, such as stem cell research. There is a need to develop effective search strategies and convenient solutions for knowledge organization in stem cell research. The understanding of the interrelationships between these MeSH terms also facilitates the building of knowledge organization systems in related subject fields.

methodsThis study collected empirical data for MeSH-related terms from stem cell literature and developed a novel approach that uses both automation and expert-selection to create a set of terms that supports enhanced retrieval. The selected MeSH terms were reconstructed into a classified thesaurus that can guide researchers towards a successful search and knowledge organization of stem cell literature.

resultsFirst, 4253 MeSH terms were harvested from a sample of 5527 stem cell related research papers from the PubMed database. Next, unrelated terms were filtered out based on term frequency and specificity. Precision and recall measures were used to help identify additional valuable terms, which were mostly non-MeSH terms. The study identified 15 terms that specifically referred to stem cell research for information retrieval, which would yield a higher precision (97.7 %) and recall (94.4 %) rates in comparison to other approaches. In addition, 128 root MeSH terms were selected to conduct knowledge organization of stem cell research in categories of anatomy, disease, and others.

conclusionsThis study presented a novel strategy and procedure to reengineer term selections of the MeSH thesaurus for literature retrieval and knowledge organization using stem cell research as a case. It could help scientists to select their own search terms and build up a thesaurus-based knowledge organization system in interested and interdisciplinary research subject areas.

Indexed as

ClassificationInformation Storage and RetrievalMedical Subject HeadingsStem Cell ResearchHumansClassifyKnowledge organization system (KOS)MeSHStem cellsThesaurus

Identifiers

PMID27215352
PMCPMC4878086

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.