Thursday Ovid sent out an email to customers about OvidSP. I have reprinted it on the blog so that others who may not have received the email may read it.

Since launching OvidSP last week, we've received a tremendous amount of feedback from customers all over the world who’ve had a chance to try out the new platform (If you haven't already done so, click the Try OvidSP! link in Gateway for access to OvidSP). One of the new features generating a lot of interest is the Basic Search tab. Basic Search employs Natural Language Processing to make it easy for all types of users - not just beginners - to get quick yet comprehensive and accurate answers to complex questions across all content.

How does Basic Search work? With Basic Search, simply enter a search term or ask a question in ordinary, everyday English terms and click Search. There's no need to use special syntax rules, search conventions, or complicated search strategies.

1. OvidSP filters the terms of your query, eliminating irrelevant noise words and tightening word choices into validated search terms and phrases.
Here is an example.
Your search query- weather related migraine
OvidSP validated terms/phrases - weather migraine

2. OvidSP utilizes a proprietary medical lexicon (drawn from the Unified Medical Language System [UMLS] Meta-thesaurus, medical dictionaries and thesauri, medical acronyms, drug and disease names, and standard American and British English dictionaries) to expand validated terms to include:

• Word variations
• Strong synonyms (such as alternate names of drugs or diseases)
• Acronyms
• Alternative spellings (such as those that occur between British English and American English)

3. OvidSP then analyzes your original query to identify the nouns, noun phrases, and adjectives that shape the topics of your query, and incorporate them into an overall, expanded search strategy. For example, a Natural Language search for weather related migraines would expand to include the following terms from the lexicon:

Ovid Validated Terms
weather
migraine

Terms Expanded from the Lexicon
weathers
migraine, hemicrania, migraines, anencephalies partial, anencephaly hemicranial, anencephaly incomplete, anencephaly partial, headache migraine, headaches migraine, hemicranial anencephaly, incomplete anencephaly, incomplete anencephaly hemicrania, migraine headache, migraine headaches, migraine unspecified, partial anencephalies, partial anencephaly

4. OvidSP then executes searches using these expansions and compiles all findings into a single results set on the Main Search Page.

Best Practices in Basic Search
The tips below are a good guide to helping you and your users get the search results you’re looking for quickly and easily.

• State your query as concisely as possible.
• Try not to use unnecessary modifiers such as "really big ekg changes in advanced hypokalemia." Use nouns more than verbs.
• Do not "force phrasing" by imposing quotation marks, parenthesis, or hyphens within your query. For example, if you enter weather-related you lose all expansions on the word weather because Ovid perceives the hyphenated phrase as a single term that has no possible expansions.
• Avoid spelling errors by keeping the Check Spelling box pre-selected.
• Use only free text or ordinary, everyday English terms; Ovid syntax is not fully supported in Basic Search.
• Expect approximately 500 relevancy-ranked results; however, occasionally you will see more when articles have the same rank.

Stay tuned for a collection of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Remember to visit the Resource Center to sign up for training, download information materials and screenshots, and request a launch kit.