• Dan Silviu Radut and Javier Sanz-Valero.
• Department of Community Nursing, Preventive Medicine, Public Health and History of Science, University of Alicante, Spain. radut@ua.es
• Health Info Libr J. 2010 Sep 1; 27 (3): 227-34.

BackgroundTo develop and apply search filters retrieving the scientific output (SO) after 2000 focusing on Public Health (PH) of the new European Union (EU) Member States after the 2004 and 2007 enlargements.MethodsTwelve geographical filters (GFs) were designed and applied to retrieve references added since 2001 in Medline (accessed through PubMed) and originated in the new EU countries. The PH area was accessed using Medical Subject Heading terms. The filters were evaluated through a manual check and the agreement/non-agreement percentages were calculated.ResultsA number of 99 912 articles revealing the total SO and 6502 articles focusing on PH were retrieved. More than 66% were published abroad and more than 80% in English. The evaluation revealed an average agreement percentage of 98.97%. The results were compared with those obtained by using simple search strategies.ConclusionsTwelve GFs applied to medline retrieved references belonging to twelve countries for a specific period of time. The evaluation of the GFs through the manual check demonstrated effectiveness of these filters. Complementary studies would be advisable to focus on the development of search filters to retrieve complete and accurate information.

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