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IACUC: Animal Alternatives Resources

A guide to help develop the literature search for an Animal Use Protocol

Clemson IACUC Search Requirements

Database Name Name each individual database searched. At least 2 databases need to be consulted.

Example: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus

*Note: PubMed, Medline, PMC, and NCBI are considered to be three different ways to search the same set of literature. For your search, you would need to only search one of these in addition to another database.

*Note: Google Scholar is not considered a scholarly database and is a search engine. It is not appropriate to search when looking for animal alternatives.
Date of Search Provide the date you conducted the search Example: January 1, 2024
Period Covered by Search Provide a range of years or months to indicate what time period of literature you consulted when conducting your search. This may be different from the date you conducted the search. Our policy requires you to search for literature published in the past ten years. Example: 2014-2024
Search Terms Search terms included should be relevant to the type of procedure that could cause pain or distress and the animal model you are using. You should also include keywords for the 3Rs terms: Reduction, Refinement, and Replacement.  See the Search Keywords tab for examples.
Search Strategy This should include all the terms you used and how you combined them using Boolean Operators.

Example: mice AND pain AND anesthesia

Ideally, you should save a few important citations and a sentence or two about the impact, or lack of impact, of each listed article on your project.
 

  • If an article changed your approach and produced a reduction, refinement, or replacement in your animal use, record a sentence or two about the the change made and its affect on animal use.
  • If an article suggested an approach that might have been a reduction/refinement/replacement but isn't possible in your research.  Write a sentence or two about why the suggested approach isn't useful in your research.

Boolean Operators

Understanding how to correctly use Boolean operators to construct your search is important!        

 

AND     Narrows search to only items containing both terms; best for combining 2 concepts heart attack AND aspirin                         
OR Broadens search to items containing any terms; best for combining synonyms heart attack OR myocardial infarction
NOT Narrows search to items containing 1 term but not another; use with caution dolphins NOT football

 

 

Search Tips

  • It is suggested that you conduct a broad search of the literature that looks for different methods that have been used to conduct similar research.
  • A basic and broad search would likely only include synonyms for the painful and/or distressing procedure or topic and the animal species or non-animal methods.
    • Example PubMed search, narrowed to titles and abstracts: Thoracentesis[tiab] AND (dog[tiab] OR dogs[tiab] OR canine[tiab] OR canines[tiab])
    • Example Scopus search, using Advanced Search: 
      • TITLE-ABS (Thoracentesis) AND TITLE-ABS(dog OR dogs OR canine OR canines)
  • You can then combined the broad search with 3Rs terms which are discussed in the Search Keywords page.
  • It is necessary to search a minimum of TWO databases. PubMed and Scopus are highly recommended.
  • For more advanced searching in PubMed, you may include Medical Subject Headings (MeSH terms) that are used to label articles. PubMed will automatically try to find and include Mesh terms when searching for keywords without tags, e.g. [tiab], otherwise they may be found in the Mesh database.
  • Browse through the search results, reading in detail those you find that appear specific to your area of study. 

See more search examples.

Unsure how to organize your search strategy? You can use a table to identify important keywords and keep track of what you search in each database. Here is an example. 

Web of Science Search

Keywords

Results

#1 Zebrafish

"zebra fish*" OR "Danio rerio" OR "D rerio" OR "brachydanio rerio" OR "b rerio" OR "zebra danio"

  

#2 fin clipping

“Fin clipping” OR “fin excision” 

  

#3 3 Rs 

Refinement: “Skin swabs” OR alternative OR refinement

  
 

Refinement: pain OR "animal welfare" OR "animal use alternatives" OR stress OR distress OR pain* OR analgesia OR analgesic* OR anesthesia* OR anesthetic* OR welfare OR alternative* OR "animal model" OR reduc* OR refin* OR replace*