rempsyc
commented
8 months ago It could be that the query is too long, which would require us to split queries into several calls...
Closed rempsyc closed 8 months ago
rempsyc
commented
8 months ago It could be that the query is too long, which would require us to split queries into several calls...
rempsyc
commented
8 months ago More investigation:
No results:
Developmental psychology [Journal] OR Journal of economic growth (Boston, Mass.) [Journal] AND ('2000/01/01 [Date - Publication] : '2000/12/31 [Date - Publication])68 results:
Developmental psychology [Journal] [AND ('2000/01/01 [Date - Publication] : '2000/12/31 [Date - Publication])Also 68 results after changing the order:
Journal of economic growth (Boston, Mass.) [Journal] OR Developmental psychology [Journal] AND ('2000/01/01 [Date - Publication] : '2000/12/31 [Date - Publication])So seems the problem originates from the year criteria applying only to the last result... There is this bit of information online:
Using Parentheses to Create an Order of Operations
In PubMed there are no separate search statements to indicate the order of performance for the Boolean operations. Instead, parentheses are the indicators for which operations are performed in what order, e.g., (a OR b) & (c OR d) means that the OR operations inside the parentheses will be done before the AND operation between the two sets of terms. If there are no parentheses used in a search formulation, then the operations will be processed left to right.
But using parentheses in our case does not solve the problem:
No results:
(Developmental psychology [Journal] OR Journal of economic growth (Boston, Mass.) [Journal]) AND ('2000/01/01 [Date - Publication] : '2000/12/31 [Date - Publication])68 results:
(Journal of economic growth (Boston, Mass.) [Journal] OR Developmental psychology [Journal]) AND ('2000/01/01 [Date - Publication] : '2000/12/31 [Date - Publication])So the priority order is not respected. I wonder if this has to do with the parenthesis already in use for the economic journal (Boston, Mass.). It seems like it, yes:
68 results:
(Developmental psychology [Journal] OR Journal of economic growth [Journal]) AND ('2000/01/01 [Date - Publication] : '2000/12/31 [Date - Publication])I posted a question on stackoverflow here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78151974/pubmed-query-priority-of-operations-using-parenthesis-leads-to-zero-results
rempsyc
commented
8 months ago A workaround to try later would be to use parentheses for all journal names, perhaps that will solve the issue.
rempsyc
commented
8 months ago The fix seems to be to use quotes around journal names (especially for journal names with parentheses). However, one source explains,
Not all phrases (string of words you enclose in double quotes) can be found in PubMed due to how PubMed indexes phrases. The easiest solution to this error is remove the double quotes, however this can lead to unintended results if you are not careful.
rempsyc
commented
8 months ago The following query for example,
"Journal of experimental and behavioral economics" [Journal]Provides zero results, with the following warning:
The following term was ignored: Journal of experimental and behavioral economicsBut it is not clear why this term is ignored!?
If I do it without quotes,
Journal of experimental and behavioral economics [Journal]Then we get
The following terms were ignored: Journal, of, experimental, and, behavioral, economicsIt seems SEVERAL of the original psych journals are lost that we added more journals.
Before:
After:
rempsyc
commented
8 months ago I think the final solution was to use double quotes instead of single quotes in the PubMed query... quite the relief after all this troubleshooting!
This query returns zero result:
This one 68 results:
It is not clear why using more choices of journals (using the OR operator) would lead to fewer results than filtering for fewer journals. This should be investigated because it probably impacts our data.