Can you rely on Embase and CPCI-S to comprehensively identify conference data? Findings from a back-to-front case study suggest probably not…
We didn’t get into this to examine the coverage of the ASH conference proceedings in Embase and CPCI-S. We wanted to handsearch the ASH conference but we found that, whilst abstracts and posters could be electronically handsearched to identify potentially eligible abstracts, each eligible record then had to be manually and individually exported for screening and analysis. That is to say, that we had to individually identify and then individually download 604 abstracts.
We wanted to explore if there was a way to identify abstracts and then a legal way to download them with greater efficiency and effectiveness than one-by-one. We perceived 5 alternate methods, namely:
1) contacting Blood (the journal who report ASH proceedings);
2) keyword searching;
3) searching Embase;
4) searching MEDLINE via EndNote; and
5) searching CPCI-S.
We compared the 5 alternate methods above to a gold-standard handsearch. Only alternate method 2 identified the same eligible studies as the gold-standard handsearch. In this case study, searching Embase and CPCI-S would have missed eligible studies which suggests coverage may be incomplete. We also reported on time and cost outcomes.
The paper is published here: