Haven't we seen this already? Duplicate records in weekly Ovid autoalerts

Abstract

Introduction: The primary objective of this study is to present data on records identified via Ovid's AutoAlert (SDI) feature. AutoAlert is one of several strategies healthcare professionals can use to keep up-to-date with the literature and thus maintain their clinical competence. It allows users to be notified via email when any new citations matching their search specifications are created in Ovid databases. Methods: We performed searches in Medline and Embase via Ovid on two topics and created weekly alerts for each search. Over a period of one year, each 'new' result was analyzed to determine whether it was previously retrieved by the initial search or in subsequent alerts. If the result had been retrieved previously, the nature of the revision to the initial record (the reason it was identified as 'new') was noted. Results: Extracted data was analysed in Excel. The investigators presented descriptive statistics on the frequency and nature of duplicate records generated via AutoAlert. Discussion: Given the increasing rate of publication in the medical literature (813,598 citations were added to Medline in 2017), email alerts in bibliographic databases can be useful tools to help healthcare professionals keep abreast of their topics of interest. Unfortunately, our study found that the AutoAlert feature consistently included edited or revised records in addition to newly created citations, and was therefore of limited value.