Related Articles

There are several systems that provide a 'related articles' or 'related records' feature. This feature can be incredibly handy for many reasons.

'Quick and Dirty' Searching *
You need a few more articles on a particular topic and already have in your hands a highly relevant article. You want to find more like it. By using the 'Related Articles' link, you will come up with closely related citations.

'Needle in a Haystack' Searching
You are looking for something in a context that very little seems to be written about. You do a textword search, identify an appropriate article from the retrieved list and then click on the 'related articles' link. Now, you should get other citations that are closely related.

'Looking for MeSH Terms' Searching **
Sometimes it's hard to figure out the best MeSH terms to use when doing a comprehensive search but once you've located a relevant article, click on the 'related articles' link. Then methodically examine the subject heading fields of the best citations to identify a list of potential subject headings. With that list in hand, conduct the search again using your list of appropriate MeSH terms.

Now for an example of how this works. Go to PubMed and, on the query line, type: killer pop machines
You'll get one citation which doesn't give you much information. Click on the 'related articles' link.

Tune in tomorrow for an in-depth look at PubMed's Related Articles.

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* As with any 'Quick and Dirty' method, this will NOT be comprehensive but will, more often than not, retrieve very relevant citations.
** Only works in databases that utilize MeSH (oddly enough!)