Using online databases to find journal articles on injury prevention and safety promotion topics: How do SafetyLit subscribers use other databases?

A thorough search of the scholarly literature is an important part of any project. Although there are ethical and scientific reasons to justify the effort required to perform an exhaustive search, we hypothesize that many searchers do not use a sufficient number of databases nor do they use the query focusing techniques necessary to perform a comprehensive search. Subscribers (approximately 19,000 people) to the SafetyLit email update, a weekly listing of recently published research on injury prevention and safety promotion, were surveyed to learn about their performance and knowledge of several key search behaviors necessary for conducting an exhaustive literature search. Over 90% of respondents perform searches of online databases and, although few have had any training in database use, they always or usually perform the search themselves. They reported performing searches using a wide variety of online bibliographic databases but only 10.3% queried two or more databases the last time they searched. Respondents’ assessment of their own knowledge and skills at searching a database had little to do with the amount of training they have received in the use of the database. Most users self-limit the information they gather to that from one or two professional disciplines. Conducting a literature search using only one or two familiar sources can lead to a failure to access essential information published by researchers in parallel fields.