BabelMeSH Searching PubMed in Multiple Languages

Table of Contents

• Definition/Background/Overview• Search by MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)• Search by PICO Linguist (PICO=Patient,

Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) • HINARI/access to full-text articles (review)

BabelMeSH• Is a tool for searching PubMed using a language other

than English.• Can identify articles in English and 12 other languages

by PICO Linguist (PICO=Patient, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) or MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) .

• Includes Arabic, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish options that would be useful for HINARI users.

• URL(Internet address) is http://babelmesh.nlm.nih.gov/• Once you have identified articles of interest, you have

to save the citations and look for the full text in HINARI.

Definition of BabelMeSH BabelMeSH is designed as a transparent cross-

language interface. Users can submit medical terms in their native language (and includes 12 options). A parser translates the query into English using a multi-language MySQL database. BabelMeSH then sends the query to PubMed through E-Utilities and returns English citations to the user.

Fang Liu, Paul Fontelo, and Michael Ackerman BabelMeSH: Development of a Cross-Language Tool for MEDLINE/PubMed AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2006; 2006: 1012. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1839504/ (17 Jan 2010)

We have accessed the initial page of BabelMeSH (http://babelmesh.nlm.nih.gov/) and the 13 language options. Besides the language options, you can go directly the [Search PICO Linguist] and [Lookup a MeSH term] options.

We have opened the MeSH Terms Lookup, clicked on Spanish from the drop down menu, entered the term embarazo (in Spanish) and clicked on Translate. The Translation is Pregnancy (in English). Next, we will click on the BabelMeSH hyperlink.

Note: for demonstration purposes we have used Spanish although you can search in any of the other 12 languages.

In <BabelMeSH><Search MEDLINE/PubMed in English, we have clicked, under the Show journal articles published in, the checkboxes for Spanish and English. We now will click on the Submit button to search for Pregnancy.

Note: Pregnancy is the English word for embarazo that we initially searched in the Look a MeSH Terms Lookup option.

The results for the PubMed Pregnancy search are 387426 citations. We now further Limit this search.

Note: this list includes articles that may or may not be available in HINARI. If you click on the Full Text link, you will not be able to access the complete article.

We have clicked on the full-text link for the first article in the list. It is from the British Medical Journal. This page asks you to Login or Buy the Article or Subscribe as you only have access to the extract/abstract view.

The HINARI User Name and Password will not work. You must login to HINARI to access the full-text article and this will be reviewed at the end of the module.

In the MeSH Terms Lookup, we have combined two terms - embarazo and vih in the Spanish Original Input drop down menu, clicked on English in the Translation drop down menu and the Translate button .

The MeSHTerms Lookup result shows that embarazo and vih are Not in Database. We are given Similar terms:

infeccion por VIH asintomatica en el embarazo Asymptomatic human immunodeficiency virus infection in pregnancy.

We now search these terms in <BabelMeSH>.

We have entered the English terms Asymptomatic human immunodeficiency virus infection in pregnancy in the Search box and clicked on the Spanish and English radio buttons. Finally, we will Submit this search in BabelMeSH.

This search resulted in 238 citations. You can click on the Abstract option for that display. Note how the search terms are displayed in each citation.

Remember – if you click on the Full Text option, you will not be able to view the complete article. You must go to HINARI.

The results for the Spanish publication only search is a significantly smaller number – 11.

Note: if you plan to look for the full-text articles in HINARI, you will need to save the citation information.

A simple way to save the information is to create a screen capture. Click on the Print Screen key while viewing the webpage of the journal.  Then paste (edit/paste or control/v) the material into a WORD document . You also could highlight the information by holding down the left click on the mouse and scrolling down the page – to highlight the information you want. You also would copy/paste this into a WORD document.

In this and subsequent slides, we will use one of the displays for a language other than English. In this option, the text and instructions are in the language we have chosen.

We have re-entered the embarazo vih search using the BabelMeSH... en espanol option. Again, we have clicked the Español and Ingles boxes and clicked on Buscar (submit).

We have displayed BabelMeSH... en español (Spanish) where we duplicated the embarazo search.

Note the drop down menu that is displayed with the initial term. You can scroll down this menu to locate subheadings that could be used to Limit your search.

Again, we were not able to locate a translated MeSH term for embarazo vih and were given Similar terms. We will click on the Buscar icon and complete the search.

The results of the embarazo vih search is the identical number (238) as when it was completed using the English interface.

Searching can be completed in 12 languages besides English.

We now look at the PICO Linguist option. You can choose your search language in the Select input language option. In PICO, you can enter information about the Patient, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome. We have displayed the Age Group drop down menu. You also have the Show journal articles published in language option.

Note: this PICO Linguist allows you to search with keywords and also apply limits from the drop down menus.

In this second PICO slide, we have displayed the Select a publication type drop down menu. Also note that there is a Gender option.

We have now accessed the PICO Linguista (Español) language option and entered a keyword search for sida con tuberculosis (AIDS and tuberculosis). We have checked the Español and Ingles article language boxes. Now, we will click on Buscar ( Search).

The results from this sida con tuberculosis= AIDS with tuberculosis search is 6276 items.

Using the same sida con tuberculosis keyword search terms, we have added the age group Adulto 19-44 anos (Adult 19-24 years) and Guias de tratamiento (Practice Guidelines). Finally, we will click on the Buscar (Search) button.

The results from this sida con tuberculosis= AIDS with tuberculosis search with the Adulto 19-44 anos and Guias de tratamiento limits are 11 items.

Note that the limits are not listed with the search terms.

In order to access the full-text articles from a BabelMeSH search, we need to return to the Full-text journals, databases and other resources page of HINARI.

Note the You are logged in message. This confirms that you will have access to the HINARI full-text articles.

Accessing journals by title 1

We will proceed to locate several journal articles from the HINARI Find journals by title A-Z list.

From this results page of the Asymptomatic human immunodeficiency virus infection in pregnancy search, we will try to locate three articles in HINARI.

We have accessed the J list from the HINARI Find journals by title A-Z list and scrolled down to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research hyperlink. We now click on this link and go to the journal.

Note that issues for HINARI users are from v. 28 (2002) – current issues so this 2009 article will be available in full-text.

We have entered the Wiley InterScience portal and opened the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research. Now we scroll down to the hyperlink of Volume 35 issue 4 and click on it .

Upon opening Volume 35 issue 4, we have scrolled down the contents page to the specific article, Outcome of cesarean section in asymptomatic HIV-1 infection in Kampala, Uganda. We can now access the full-text by clicking on the hyperlink for either the HTML or PDF version.

We have accessed the T list from the HINARI Find journals by title A-Z list and will look for an article from Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. This title is available in HINARI and, to access the full-text article, we would follow the same steps as in the previous example.

In this final example, we have accessed the E list from the HINARI Find journals by title A-Z list and will look for an article from Enfermedades Infecciosas y Micriobologia Clinica. This title is NOT available in HINARI and the full-text article noted in the BabelMeSH search cannot be opened.

This is the end of BabelMeSH for HINARI Users.

Updated 01 2010