LibGuides: Systematic Reviews in the Sciences: Subject headings

Subject headings

Subject specific databases often use subject headings (also known as 'descriptors' or 'index terms') taken from a thesaurus of terms suited to the disciplinary focus of the database. These are a type of controlled vocabulary that can help you capture all of the literature on your topic, regardless of specific language that an author might have chosen to include in their title and abstract.

Combine subject heading searches with keywords to expand your search and capture articles which may not have been assigned subject headings.

When searching multidisciplinary databases such as Scopus, ProQuest and Web of Science use natural language as subject headings from various thesauri may be present, or not used at all.

MeSH

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are a controlled vocabulary of medical terms that is maintained in an online thesaurus by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. These terms are hierarchically-organised and are used for indexing, cataloguing, and searching biomedical and health-related information.

MeSH includes subject headings that can be searched in Ovid Medline and PubMed, as well as other resources maintained by the National Library of Medicine.

Using the MeSH database will allow you to choose the MeSH term which most accurately describes what you are searching for. MeSH terms further down the hierarchy from the term you have selected will be automatically included in your search. For a comprehensive search it is useful to include textwords (words found anywhere in the record) searching into your strategy as well.

MeSH
Use the MeSH database to find MeSH terms, including Subheadings, Publication Types, Supplementary Concepts and Pharmacological Actions. Most MeSH entries will include a definition of the term, year of creation, a list of mapped terms, and the tree structure so that you can see where the term fits within the MeSH organisational hierarchy.
PubMed Subject Search: How it works
This interactive tutorial is a useful introduction to using MeSH in PubMed.
Using the Medical Subject Headings
This hands-on, self-paced training course teaches you how to use the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for expert PubMed searching.

American Psychological Association index

Each record in APA's databases contains controlled vocabulary terms from the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms. APA staff index records according to the source document's level of specificity.

'Searching with the Thesaurus and Subject Headings on Ovid' by APA Publishing Training, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-9P5ofjAB4

IEEE

The IEEE Thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary of descriptive engineering, technical, and scientific terms as well as IEEE-specific society terms. The thesaurus represents terminology and vocabulary usage drawn from IEEE transactions and journal articles, conference papers, and standards.

You can download a PDF version of the thesaurus online.