Scope of the Database
Precisely what do we mean by "the literature of traumatic stress"?
Our policy is to include in the PILOTS database any paper that :
- deals explicitly with post-traumatic stress disorder or acute stress disorder (with or without reference to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
- deals with the assessment, description, prevention, or treatment of any psychiatric disorder -- especially dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personality disorder), other dissociative disorders, or borderline personality disorder -- associated etiologically or epidemiologically with exposure to a traumatic event, or to an event experienced as traumatic by the population under discussion
- addresses the preparation or provision of mental health services to a traumatized population or a population at risk of experiencing traumatic events
- discusses issues of professional ethics, scientific methodology, or public policy relating to traumatized populations.
The PILOTS database also includes, on a more selective basis, papers that:
- discuss the prevalence of traumatic events without mentioning their mental health consequences
- discuss psychological or psychosocial stress resulting from ordinary life experiences perceived as traumatic by the population under discussion
- review literature on topics peripheral to traumatic stress studies.
A Diverse Literature
The literature of traumatic stress is a diverse one. It is international in origin, interdisciplinary in approach, and eclectic in methodology. Despite the efforts of those committed to establishing "traumatology" as a recognized discipline, most of its practitioners still define themselves in terms of the fields in which they received their academic training. Most members of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies also maintain one or more memberships in such discipline-oriented organizations as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, or their counterparts in other countries. They tend to publish their work in the journals of their home disciplines in addition to (and sometimes in preference to) the Journal of Traumatic Stress and other avowedly interdisciplinary journals.
There exist many substantial, well-established databases that index the mental health literature. The National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE has set a world standard for electronic bibliography. The American Psychological Association's PsycINFO offers thorough coverage of the psychological literature. Other databases, among them EMBASE, Mental Health Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, and Social Work Abstracts, also index this literature. Given this wealth of indexing resources, what purpose is served by the existence of the PILOTS database? What has PILOTS to offer that would make it superior to other databases?
Differences from Other Databases
We feel that PILOTS differs significantly from other databases in several ways:
- Unlike most other bibliographical databases covering medical and mental health literature, PILOTS does not restrict its coverage to articles appearing in selected journals. Instead, we attempt to cover all journal articles relevant to PTSD and other forms of traumatic stress, whatever their origin. PILOTS also includes references to books and pamphlets on traumatic stress; where appropriate, each chapter of these publications is indexed as a separate document. We also include citations to relevant individual chapters of books even when the book as a whole would not be indexed in PILOTS.
- The PILOTS database uses a special indexing vocabulary of subject terms designed to serve users of the traumatic stress literature. This PILOTS Thesaurus is continually revised to reflect the evolution of traumatic stress studies. At each revision, earlier records are changed to reflect additions to or changes in the indexing vocabulary.
- PILOTS makes it easy to locate all publications by a particular person, by using a single standard form of author names wherever possible. Similarly, PILOTS uses standardized names for psychological tests, major disasters, and personal names of historic figures.
- PILOTS does not restrict coverage to refereed publications, nor to those intended for a professional audience. This means that a wide range of informational needs can be served by the database. It also means that each user must decide whether the citations he or she retrieves are suitable for the intended use.
Limitations of the Database
Like any bibliographical work, the PILOTS database has its limitations. These should be considered when planning a search of the database or when evaluating the results of a search. The PILOTS database indexes a fast-growing, rapidly-evolving international interdisciplinary literature, and is produced by a small staff with limited resources. Users should not assume that searching PILOTS will retrieve every pertinent publication, nor should they assume that their failure to retrieve papers on a particular topic means that no such papers exist.
While our goal is to include in PILOTS every published document on traumatic stress, at any given time there will almost certainly be important publications that simply have not yet been added to the database. As our first priority is the indexing of journal articles and book chapters, coverage of government documents, technical reports, doctoral dissertations, and other materials will for some time to come be extremely limited, as will coverage of publications in languages other than English. In addition, certain classes of material (listed under "Exclusions" below) are not included in the database.
PILOTS is a bibliographical rather than a full-text database, though in many cases the abstracts included in the records are extensive enough to allow the user to decide whether he or she needs to consult the original document. Where possible, PILOTS records include hypertext links to sources of full text on the World Wide Web.
Exclusions
The following classes of material are not included in the PILOTS database:
- Newspaper articles, except those appearing in separately-titled magazine sections. (Thus an article in the New York Times would not be included, but one appearing in the New York Times Magazine would be.)
- Book reviews.
- Casual letters to the editor appearing in popular periodicals. (Letters appearing in scientific, scholarly, or professional journals are included, as are substantial letters appearing in popular magazines.)
- Journalistic accounts of research elsewhere published or presented, such as the brief reports in publications such as New Scientist and Science News which summarize conference presentations or articles from scientific journals.
- Case law (i.e., published reports of judicial decisions).
- Unpublished conference presentations.
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