3.6.2 Search limits

When the amount of resulting hits is too high to be managed within the available timeframe / resources, search limits may be applied.

First, tools related to the Thesaurus should be considered:

• Focus / Major Heading: limits to the articles that have been indexed with the term as Major Heading. This helps to reduce the amount of results (up to 40%) while keeping a good pertinence thanks to the human indexation of the full article (in case of Medline and Embase).
• Subheading: these are also added to the description of an article by the indexers, but should be used with more precaution (can render the search strategy too restrictive).

Several search interfaces provide search limits that can also be applied to narrow the search. Classical examples are date and language limits, but some databases also provide limits according to age, gender, publication type etc. Before applying search limits, the risk of a too specific (i.e. narrow) search should be considered.