Help
This section contains answers to the most frequently asked questions received at
the Educus website. Click on the question to display associated response, clicking
on the question again will hide the associated response.
Frequently Asked
- Type in the key terms you are looking for. Do not type an entire sentence - instead
use commonly used keywords and phrases.
- If you want to use multiple terms, please use semicolon (";") as separator or use
our "Combo-Assist" feature. Click on "Search" to retrieve results.
- Click on "Advanced search"
- As you type in the author text field the auto-suggest feature will bring up a list
of possible author names that might match the name you are looking for.
- You can also specify if the author should be the first author.
- Click on the add icon (+) to add it to the list. If the author name is not found
in the database it will not be added.
- You may continue to add as many authors as you would like and then click "Search".
- Switch to "Advanced Search" and select "Pick Your Own Journals".
- As you type in the journal name text field the auto-suggest feature will bring up
a list of possible journal names that might match the name you are looking for.
- Click on the add icon (+) to add journal to the list of journals you would like
to search/browse. If the journal is not available in our database it cannot be added
to the list.
- You may continue to add as many journals as you would like and then click "Search".
- Combo Assist enables users to construct a search query using 'AND', 'OR', and 'NOT'
keywords. In such, AND will include both keywords; OR will include either or keyword;
and NOT will exclude a keyword from a search.
Example: (Inflammatory bowel disease OR Crohn's disease) AND Infliximab
- Below are the 9 possible ways of building a query with Combo Assist.
A OR B OR C
A OR B AND C
A OR B NOT C
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=
=
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A OR B OR C
(A OR B) AND C
(A OR B) NOT C
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A AND B OR C
A AND B AND C
A AND B NOT C
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=
=
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A AND (B OR C)
A AND B AND C
(A AND B) NOT C
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A NOT B OR C
A NOT B AND C
A NOT B NOT C
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=
=
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A NOT (B OR C)
A NOT (B AND C)
A NOT (B OR C)
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Journals
General
Educus Journals is a medical search engine capable of executing fast, relevant searches
on NLM Medline (PubMed) journals published since 1865. Educus’ unique features include
high relevancy searches, keyword variation searches, and much more.
We developed this website to allow medical professionals to find the information
they need, when they need it.
Educus provides fast searches that are much more relevant than PubMed and Ovid.
With Educus, you can quickly find what you’re looking for, without the junk.
Example 1:
Try searching for "Digoxin" and "Right Heart Failure" in Educus.
Your search will return around 143 articles of which 7 articles are really relevant
to both keywords and are displayed in a few seconds.
Try the same search in PubMed, and you will get around 3,037 articles. However,
only 143 of these articles are related to both keywords- the ones Educus pulled
up immediately. So you could spend hours searching for these articles in PubMed
(and you still may not find them) or you could spend seconds searching in Educus
and find the best 7 articles immediately.
Example 2:
Educus provides much more consistent results with similar keywords. Searching PubMed
for "endstage renal disease" returns 449 results, yet searching for "end stage renal
disease" (the only difference is a single space) returns over 81,000 results. Regardless
of the input, Educus returns 7,667 highly relevant results.
Example 3:
Educus even allows you to use medical abbreviations and acronyms, and still get
the best results. If you’re looking for "EKG" changes in a patient with an "Acute
MI" that also has a "LBBB", simply type "ekg; acute mi; lbbb" and search. Educus
returns 62 highly relevant articles. Ovid doesn’t return any results, and PubMed
only returns 15 articles of mediocre relevancy at best.
Example 4:
Try searching for "dvt prophylaxis; rivaroxaban" in Educus.
In Educus, you will get 36 highly relevant articles including 2 good NEJM articles.
In PubMed, you will only get 5 articles and you will miss the NEJM ones. The reason
is our keyword variation is much better, as they are developed by practicing physicians.
Please click our 'keyword variation' button on the search result page to understand
why our results are so accurate.
*Note: All the above example searches were made on Oct 7, 2010 and search results
may vary over time.
Educus only developed the search technology. It primarily searches the NLM (PubMed)
database of information. Whatever journals and articles that PubMed has, we have
too.
Approximately 360 of the most popular medical journals are identified as Educus
Core Journals. They include the New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of
the American Medical Association (JAMA), the American Journal of Medicine, and many
others.
Yes and no. To execute searches, registration is not required, but to use some of
the features like Preferences, My Favorites, Search Agents and so forth, registration
is required. However, registration for Educus is free.
No, for now Educus is completely free. To use all of the website features, however,
you do need to register.
Please feel free to use the
Contact Us form to provide
feedback, report errors, or send us any questions that you may have about the website,
features, etc.
Using Educus Journals
Relevancy is an important feature for any search engine. It refers to the capability
of the search engine to provide results appropriate to user's needs.
Educus classifies results into three relevancy categories: high, medium, and low.
Based on Educus’ searching algorithms, high relevancy results are most likely what
the user was actually searching for, and it is the default relevancy search setting.
The user can choose to change the relevancy setting if he or she wants to see results
from another relevancy category.
If a search doesn’t return any high relevancy results, Educus will automatically
switch to the next relevancy category.
Our "Search Agents" feature lets you save your search parameters and send you automatic
updates with the search results. Registration is required to use this feature. Once
registered, please login using your account and follow the instructions as mentioned
below.
- Visit "My Account" (located at top right).
- From the "Journals" section, follow the "Search Agents/E-mail Alerts" link.
- Specify a name for the search agent. You may want to specify a name that identifies
the agent properly - like "Hypertensionresults_daily" - which gives you an idea
about the kind of results that will be emailed and the frequency with which they
might be emailed.
- Proceed to the next step and specify the options for search like keyword, journals,
authors etc.
- You can opt to just save this agent, set an email schedule or save and search instantly.
If you do not set an email schedule at the time of creation, you can always set
one up later from the list of "Search Agents"
There are multiple ways in which you can limit the number of search results if your
current search is retrieving too many results.
- Change the search keywords to be more specific.
- Use the "Keyword Variation" feature to exclude certain terms that were picked up
automatically by the engine as synonyms or related terms.
- Limit the number of journals to be searched using "Journal Category" section. You
can specify the exact journals to include in your search using the "Pick Your Own
Journals" option.
- Limit the results by selecting a different duration in the "Published in the Last"
section. You may want to search articles that have been published in the last few
years to get the most recent articles.
- You can also reduce the number of results by specifying various publication types
or limiting the search to include only articles that have links to full-text, links
to free full-text or the ones that contain abstracts.
If you still continue to receive overwhelming number of search results, you may
want to use our "Advanced Search" feature to provide more limitations on search
results.
Yes, Educus uses a spellchecker that automatically corrects misspelled keywords
and phrases.
Yes, Educus Journals not only searches for the keyword(s) you type, but it also
looks for the most frequently used keyword variations, synonyms, and their plurals.
Yes, if use a semicolon (;) to separate each keyword, you can get autosuggest help
for as many keywords as you like.
As of May 2, 2011, we have 300,000 keywords entered into the Educus database. We
are working daily and will be adding 500-1000 new keywords per day. This is a continuous
process as new keywords appear almost every day in medicine.
Yes, using our Search Agents feature, you can subscribe to daily, weekly, bi-weekly
and monthly e-mails.
Yes, using our E-mail/Share an article feature, you can e-mail any journal article
to your friends.
Advanced search has only a few values selected for each category by default. After
logging in, you can choose which settings you would like for your account’s default
settings by first selecting each and then clicking the "Save Preferences" button.
When an advanced search is based on author, you can specify whether the author you
are looking for should be the first author or any author. Most articles have at
least one author listed, and sometimes there can be many.
The publishers of each journal usually have complete copyrights over their published
content, yet all of the abstracts are copyright free. Some journals give free, full
text access after 6 months to a year of publication. Educus provides a link to all
free, full text articles.
Save Preferences are the search preferences that are set to default each
time a user selects "Advanced Search". These default preferences are the same for
each advanced search. However, search keywords and/or combo assist keywords are
NOT saved when a user chooses "Save Preferences".
Search Agents are like saved searches. A user may create as many search agents
as he or she would like.
My Favorites are like containers, which store the user's selected trials.
A user may add as many trials as he or she would like to a folder in his or her
My Favorites.
Full-text links are provided by publishers who submit it electronically to a central
repository. Accuracy and maintenance of such links is up to the publishers and we
are unable to make any changes to such links. Please contact appropriate publisher
if a link is not found to be working. The contact information can be found on the
publisher's website.
Educus.com does not contain any full-text articles. However, you may use any of
the following measures to obtain full-text article.
- Limit your search using our filters to show only articles which are freely available
on the web. You can then follow the link to either PubMed Central or to the publisher’s
website for free full-text.
- Contact the publisher directly for free articles. Some publishers provide access
to articles for free after registering at their website.
- Obtain articles from a local library. Some local libraries have copies of medical
journals or can get a copy of an article for you. You may also ask the librarian
about inter-library loan options and any applicable charges.
- If you are a medical professional, physician, student or a researcher and are affiliated
with a hospital, research institute or a university please contact your medical
library to get the articles that might be available for free to members.
ICD Codes
The Educus ICD-9 Code search is designed to assist users in efficiently navigating
ICD-9 codes. For the user’s convenience, there are three different modes in which
to search ICD-9 codes.
Using ICD Codes Search
This mode includes a comprehensive index of all ICD-9 codes. This mode is best when
searching for uncommon or unfamiliar ICD-9 codes.
This mode contains an abridged list of ICD-9 codes, based on the usage patterns
of other physicians and healthcare professionals. This mode is best when searching
for common ICD-9 codes.
This mode allows the user to bookmark ICD-9 codes which he or she uses most frequently.
Use of this mode requires registration with Educus. By logging in to his or her
account, the user can access his or her "Favorites" at any computer.