PubMed Quick Guide
PubMed comprises more than 23 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
How to Access PubMed on campus
· Open the Library and Learning Services website at http://www.uel.ac.uk/lls
· Select Databases & E-Journals
· Select P and then PubMed from the Databases A-Z list
· Select Access 0n- and Off-Campus
Off campus access
PubMed is freely accessible off campus. No username or password is needed.
Subject Searching
Type a word or phrase into the search box, then click on the Search button or press the Enter key. Combine search terms with connector words: “AND”, “OR” or “NOT”.
To retrieve more references, use the truncation symbol *
e.g. type therap* to retrieve therapy, therapies, therapeutic.
Author Searching
Author names should be entered in the form singh mp, but initials are optional.
Searching for a specific article
You can search for a specific article by journal, author, title words etc. using the ‘Single Citation Matcher’ link – found under ‘PubMed Tools’. Type your search criteria into the appropriate boxes.
This can be useful if you want to look for a range of works by a particular author, or research the content of just one journal.
Using Filters
‘Filters’ are located at the left of the screen. This feature allows a search to be restricted by languages, ages, publication dates etc. Use these filters to make your search more specific.
Displaying and viewing search results
You can change how your results are displayed by selecting the options under ‘Display Settings’.
The abstract may be viewed by clicking the hyperlink title for each item, or to view it for all citations on the page, change the ‘Display’ pull down option from ‘Summary’ to ‘Abstract’ or ‘Abstract (text)’.
Hold your mouse over the journal abbreviations given in the citations to find the full titles of the journals.
Related Articles
A useful PubMed feature is the ability to find citations that are similar to those of interest. To retrieve related articles, click on the ‘Related citations’ link below each citation.
Marking records
Records can be marked for exporting by placing a tick in the box to the left of the record. If you want to perform several searches and save results from across these different searches, then mark the records you want and click on ‘Send to’ at the top of the screen, dropping the box down to select ‘Clipboard’. You can add up to 500 items to the Clipboard, but note that Clipboard items will be lost after 8 hours of inactivity. Remember to send marked items to Clipboard before performing your next search.
To access the records you have added to the Clipboard, click on the ‘Clipboard’. Collected records can then be printed, emailed or saved using the instructions below.
Send to…
To save records, select ‘file’ from the ‘Send to’ drop-down menu.
To email records, select ‘E-mail’ from the ‘Send to’ drop-down menu. You will be prompted to provide your email address.
To save citations for citation management software, change the display format to MEDLINE before downloading or emailing.
Links to Full Text
Whilst PubMed is an abstract database, some of the citations have links to the full-text of articles through PubMed Central (a digital archive of life science journal literature).
Saving Searches
‘My NCBI’ – found on the top right of the screen – allows you to save searches, set up email alerts for new content, display links to web resources (LinkOut) and to choose filters that group search results.
MeSH
The MeSH Database – found under ‘More Resources’ – helps you to find the right Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for your PubMed search. Search for your term or concept, and once found, click on the link to view and select subheadings and to refine aspects of the MeSH term. Tick the terms desired, and click on ‘Add to search builder’ and then ‘Search PubMed’.
Clinical Queries
From the ‘Clinical Queries’ page – found under ‘PubMed Tools’ – you can search by a clinical study category, find systematic reviews and run medical genetics searches.
July 2014