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Purpose - The purpose of this research is to provide the scientific community with some quantitative data of relevance to the evaluation of two major citation databases. In addition, various aspects of the methodology of database coverage comparisons are discussed.Design methodology approach - Calculations of the overlaps between the journal lists of Web of Science and Scopus and some other major scientific databases are presented.Findings - The results provide some measures of the overall title coverage as well as the amount of unique material in the sources studied.Research limitations implications - The journal title overlap calculations are based on journal lists provided by the database producers rather than searches in the databases themselves. Any inaccuracies in the lists may be reflected in the results. Also, the lists do not provide any information about the depth and consistency of the coverage. The nature of possible error sources is discussed.Originality value - The methodology chosen allows comparatively quick comparisons between the contents of databases. This makes it suitable for analysis of trends in database coverage.

Objective Most occupational health physicians access electronic databases to obtain reliable medical information. Although it has been demonstrated that the use of Medline alone does not ensure comprehensiveness, many experts rely solely on this database. Our study aimed to discover to what extent the physician who limits his/her search to Medline misses studies of high quality. Methods We constructed a \"gold standard\" database of high-quality intervention studies gathering all the references included in the systematic reviews of the Cochrane Library and indexed under the topic \"occupational health field\". We then searched all these references, one by one, in Medline. Results Overall, 88.8% [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 86.1-91.5] of the high quality studies included in our gold standard database were indexed in Medline. References included in reviews on psychiatric or psychological topics were significantly less often indexed in Medline [81.7% (95% CI 75.9-88.5)] than references included in reviews on other topics [92.2% (95% CI 89.5-95.0)] (P= 0.001). Conclusion The recall ratio of Medline for high-quality intervention studies is close to 90%. For occupational health practitioners who aim to find reliable answers to their daily practice questions, searching Medline only is more cost-effective than previously thought.

Although an important part of the evidence base in health, systematic reviews are not always easy to find. Difficulties are compounded when interventions under review are \"social and environmental\" (that is, targeting wider determinants of health). The authors explored searches from a descriptive map containing thirty-two systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of social and environmental interventions for childhood obesity. Which sources give the highest yield of relevant reviews per 100 records? What is the value of searching databases that index literature beyond the \"health\" arena when looking for data on the effectiveness of social and environmental interventions? The authors analyzed search results from nineteen databases and calculated the precision and the relative and unique contribution of each source. Searches of specialist systematic review databases-Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), Database of Promoting Health Effectiveness Reviews (DoPHER), and Health Technology Assessment (HTA)-had the highest precision, although MEDLINE, CINAHL, and PsycINFO located many additional reviews. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews should be searched for health-related reviews. Searches of education, transportation, social policy, and social sciences databases did not identify additional reviews. Searching websites and bibliographies was important. Searches for review-level evidence could profitably start with the specialist review databases. Searches of the major health-related databases are essential, but database searching beyond them may not identify much additional evidence. Internet and hand-search remain important sources of reviews not found elsewhere. Comparison of the results with previous research suggests that appropriate sources for locating primary and secondary evidence may be different.