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LETTER TO THE
EDITOR
DOI:
dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2020.832
Journal of the Medical Library Association 108 (1) January 2020 jmla.mlanet.org
120
Response to “Redundancy of terms is not an error
but plays a positive role in composing search
strategies”
Jose Antonio Salvador-Olivan; Gonzalo Marco-Cuenca; Rosario Arquero-Avilés
See end of article for authors’ affil iations.
Response to Schoones J. Redundancy of terms is not an error but plays a positive role in composing search
strategies [letter to the editor]. J Med Libr Assoc. 2020 Jan;108(1):118–9. DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2020.780.
Comment on Salvador-Oliván JA, Marco-Cuenca G, Arquero-Avilés R. Errors in search strategies used in
systematic reviews and their effects on information retrieval. J Med Libr Assoc. 2019 Apr;107(2):210–21.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.567.
To the editor, we agree with Schoones [1] that
redundant terms (and their morphological variants)
are beneficial for search planning (i.e., search
strategy composition), so it is advisable to consider
all possible terms (and their morphological variants)
that may be used to represent a concept.
We also agree that a search strategy is a “Livin’
Thing” and that its results dictate whether the initial
search strategy is also the final strategy. However,
the search strategy published in a systematic review
must be the final strategy that was executed in the
databases and that produced the results indicated in
the flowchart. It is this search strategy that enables a
study to be replicated and that will be evaluated in
the peer-review process. In our study, we assessed
the published strategies, not the initial or
intermediate strategies that were tested.
Authors justify redundancy because the decision
to include or exclude terms depends on the
references retrieved, as the effect of the terms on the
results is impossible to predict. In the proposed
example, with the search statement of "massive
chronic intervillositis"[tw] OR "chronic
intervillositis"[tw] OR "chronic histiocytic
intervillositis"[tw] OR "histiocytic intervillositis"[tw]
OR "intervillositis"[tw], it is known beforehand that
"intervillositis"[tw] will retrieve all records that
contain this term (individually or as part of a
sentence), so other terms are unnecessary.
Redundant terms in a search strategy do not
affect the retrieval of information. The principle of
parsimony instructs us to eliminate that which is
unnecessary. Applied to information retrieval, this
principle prompts us to eliminate any terms or
phrases from a search strategy that do not retrieve or
provide new records, as they are thus unnecessary.
REFERENCE
1. Schoones J. Redundancy of terms is not an error but plays a
positive role in composing search strategies [letter to the
editor]. J Med Libr Assoc. 2020 Jan;108(1):118–9. DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2020.780.
AUTHORS’ AFFILIATIONS
José Antonio Salvador-Oliván, MD, PhD, jaso@unizar.es,
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8568-3098, Professor, Department of
Library and Information Science and Faculty of Medicine, University
of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Gonzalo Marco-Cuenca, gmarco@unizar.es, https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-7149-6192, Professor, Department of Library and Information
Science and Faculty of Medicine, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza,
Spain
Letter to the editor 121
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2020.832
jmla.mlanet.org
108 (1) January 2020 Journal of the Medical Library Association
Rosario Arquero-Avilés, carquero@ucm.es, https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-3097-8734, Professor, Department of Library and Information
Science, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Received September 2019; accepted September 2019
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Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the
University of Pittsb urgh Press.
ISSN 1558-9439 (Online)
