Preferred terms

These preferred terms have been agreed in consensus from the working group

The following preferred terms are used following consensus from the working group and feedback from colleagues.

Bibliographic databases

"Bibliographic databases" is used instead of “primary research databases” to refer to the databases available via Ovid, EBSCOhost, and ProQuest. These are:

• Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED)
• British Nursing Index (BNI)
• Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL)
• Embase
• Emcare
• Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC)
• Medline
• PsycINFO

PubMed and subject-specific databases are included under this umbrella term.

Clinical decision support tool

"Clinical decision support tool" is used instead of “point-of-care tool” (used in the first and second editions of the London, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex (LKSS) Regional Searching Guidance) or “clinical reference tool”.

Deduplication

"Deduplicate” and “deduplication” are used instead of “remove duplicates” and “the removal of duplicates” respectively.

Evidence search

"Evidence search" is used instead of “literature search”.

Filter

"Filter" is used instead of “hedge”.

High tier evidence

"High tier evidence" is used instead of “secondary evidence”.

NHSE KLS (NHS England Knowledge and Library Services)

Used instead of HEE or NHS Digital following their mergers, except where the new moniker would make the provenance of resources unclear.

The KL Hub

"The KL Hub" is used after every first instance of “The NHS Knowledge and Library Hub” within entries, for brevity, replacing “National Discovery Tool/Service” used in the second edition of the LKSS Regional Searching Guidance.

Provider interface

"Provider interface" is used instead of “native interface” to refer to EBSCOhost, Ovid, ProQuest and ProQuest Dialog.

Scoping search

"Scoping search" is used instead of “pilot search”, or “quick and dirty search”.

Subject heading

"Subject heading" is used in favour of “descriptor” or “thesaurus term” or “controlled language term” or “controlled vocabulary term”.