PubMed and its
search options
Jan Emmerich, Sonja Jacobi, Kerstin Müller
(5th Semester Library Management)
Table of Contents



What is PubMed?
Welcome to PubMed
Search options
 Simple search


Advanced search





Simple search by search field tags
Search by limitations
Search by category fields
Search by index field
Display settings
Save options
What is PubMed?






free meta search engine
access to the bibliographic information source
MEDLINE
daily update
increase of 500.000 records a year
contains approximately 19 million article citations from
5.000 journals published worldwide
service of the United States National Library of
Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health
(NIH)
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
What is PubMed?




articles are indexed under the application of the MeSH
thesaurus
MeSH contains nearly 25.000 descriptors
is a part of the Entrez information retrieval system
which is a global query cross-database search system
offers many different search options for non- and
professional researchers
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
What is PubMed?
Offers access to…

Oldmedline (articles before 1966)

PRE-Medline: in-process citations (currently about 100.000)

HealthStar (about 3 million records)

Journals from peripheral areas of medicine

Non-medical articles in Medline journals

References to journal full texts

Links to patent information on the Internet
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Welcome to PubMed
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Welcome to PubMed

“using PubMed”



various help texts
online training by movies
“PubMed tools”

direct access to:




“More resources”


the journal search
search of clinical studies
pool of various special searches
direct access to certain databases
“Sign in”

free account to expand the possibilities of using PubMed
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Welcome to PubMed
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Welcome to PubMed

“getting started”

general information how to use PubMed:




“resources”


help manual
“NCBI Handbook”
various trainings and tutorials
PM databases summarized under different headings
“How to”

more information about how to receive the full texts of
the articles
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Welcome to PubMed

“Popular”



“Featured”


offers more utilities and databases
“NCBI information”




list of the most used databases
quick access to the major databases
general information about NCBI
contact information
newsletter
“Help Desk”

contact PubMed directly
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Simple search

keyword search formulations

logical interconnections





The Boolean operators AND (intersection); OR (union); NOT
(exclusion)
bracket setting
search for phrases
wildcard search
various help boxes




related articles
more articles with search terms in the title
suggestions to use other, specified search terms
history of recent activities
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Search options
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Simple search by search field tags
Frequently used search-field tags










[au] - author
[dp] - date published (YYYY/MM/DD)
[ip] - issue, part or supplement
[la] - language
[pg] - first page number of the article
[pmid] - PubMed ID
[pt] - publication type
[ta] - journal title
[ti] - title words
[vi] – volume
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Advanced search

provides the same operators like the simple search

additionally

specification of the search query
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Search by category fields

combination of different category fields

search of the index entries of every category field
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Search by index field


automatic bracket setting
research is possible in “all fields” or in certain fields like
“author”, “language”, “title”, …
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Display settings
Possibilities







summary
summary (text)
abstract
abstract (text)
MEDLINE
XML
PMID List
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Save options
Possibilities





file (copy will be saved on the computer)
clipboard (copy will be saved virtual, limit: 500 results)
collections (saves search queries)
email (copy of the article and an optional message will
be send to an email address)
order (interlibrary lending /document delivery)
o What is PubMed?
o Welcome to PubMed
o Search options
o Display settings
o Save options
Thank you!