The term stopword on Medline means what?

The term stopword on Medline means what?

• A. It always expands search results
• B. It is a synonym for keyword
• C. It is used to anchor queries across fields
• D. It cannot be used as a search term in the database

Answer: (D)

Stopwords are common words that the Medline search system filters out when building results. Because they’re not indexed, they don’t carry meaning that helps distinguish articles, so you can’t reliably use them to retrieve documents on their own. If you include a stopword with other terms, the stopword is ignored and the search is driven by the remaining meaningful terms. That’s why the statement that a stopword cannot be used as a search term in the database is the best description. The other ideas—that stopwords expand results, are synonyms for keywords, or anchor queries across fields—don’t fit how Medline handles indexing and search.

Stopwords are common words that the Medline search system filters out when building results. Because they’re not indexed, they don’t carry meaning that helps distinguish articles, so you can’t reliably use them to retrieve documents on their own. If you include a stopword with other terms, the stopword is ignored and the search is driven by the remaining meaningful terms. That’s why the statement that a stopword cannot be used as a search term in the database is the best description. The other ideas—that stopwords expand results, are synonyms for keywords, or anchor queries across fields—don’t fit how Medline handles indexing and search.