Systematic searching in Ovid Embase: understanding the MEDLINE document collection and identifying conference records

Abstract

Ovid Embase is an important database in systematic searches for health and medical topics. This paper shows how the document collections on Ovid Embase can be used to limit searches and isolate the unique content from MEDLINE that is available on Embase. This is used to test a method for identifying conference records from Embase. The recommended method found 5,108,945 conference records on Embase on Ovid March 1 2022, about 14% of the database. Search strategies are provided for the scenarios that are most likely to be encountered in systematic searches.