PubMed: The Basics

Below are a few essential tips to help you improve your PubMed searches.

Boolean Operators

AND, OR, NOT – are used to combine search terms, and in PubMed, they must be in UPPERCASE

• AND is used when you’re looking for articles that contain ALL of your search terms (narrows your search).
• OR is used when you’re looking for articles containing at least one of your search terms (broadens your search; often used for synonyms).
• NOT is used when you want articles that EXCLUDE your search term.

Truncation

Use * to replace one or more characters at the end of your search term. This can be very useful if you’re doing a broad search and will accept multiple forms of your search term, including plurals.

Single Citation Matcher

PubMed has a handy tool if you’re trying to locate a specific reference: the single citation matcher. A fast way to use it is to start entering the journal name (a menu of possible titles pops up), the publication year, and the last name of the first author (restricting choices to “only as first author”).

Article Type

Anytime you search on PubMed, the default results page is for “All” results. If you only want specific type of article, say peer review articles only, you can narrow your search to this particular type.

PubMed: Beyond the Basics

• PubMed: Creating an NCBI Account (3:37)
  My NCBI helps you save PubMed citations to your articles and manage peer review article compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy


• Automate PubMed Searches & Save Citation Collections with My NCBI (12.56)
  Learn how to have your PubMed searches automatically run and the results emailed to you daily, weekly, or monthly. You will also learn how to create PubMed collections that you can share with others or keep privately for yourself.


• Learn about Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
  (MeSH) It is used for indexing, cataloging, and searching biomedical and health-related information


• PubMed: Using the Advanced Search Builder (MeSH) Video (3:12)
  Learn to use PubMed's Advanced Search features to refine your search with the example of a publication date range; and find journal and author names using the autocomplete feature.


• Using PubMed in Evidence-Based Practice Training Course
  Evidence-based practice is a method for framing clinical questions that will help yield optimal search results.



PubMed: in-Depth

• How PubMed Works: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) (39:25)
  


• How PubMed Works: Automatic Term Mapping (54:49)
  



Trainings, Tutorials & Updates

• PubMed® Online Training
  A complete online training video library by NLM. from the National Library of Medicine, includes database tours, tutorials, webcasts, videos, classes, and handouts
  

Internet Archive

Hundreds of thousands of free full-text titles covering a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books. Can view in many file formats, including: PDF, ePUB, Kindle, Daisy, DiVu, HTML.

HathiTrust Digital Library

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of over 3 million public domain free full-text books (over 7 million with snippet views) digitized from libraries around the world.

National Academies Press

You must create a free account in order to access their free full-text content
Publishes over 200 reports per year from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, The Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. Contains over 4,000 titles which can be downloaded by chapter or in its entirety in PDF format, or read online by chapter in HTML format..