PubMed @ UMSL: Beyond Basics

 A   To access the advanced search features, click the Advanced link below the search box to open the Advanced Search Builder.

 B   Type a term (e.g., asthma) in the search box.

 C   Click ADD to add the term to the query box.

 D   The first term has been added to the query box.

 E   To add another concept (e.g., pollution), type it in the search box.

 F   You can choose to limit your search to a particular portion of each record by selecting an option from the All Fields menu. This is OPTIONAL but can significantly narrow your search. Below are explanations of when and how to use some of the most common fields:

• Title or Title/Abstract will search for a term only in article titles or in article titles and abstracts.
• Text Word will search for a term within entire articles, including titles, abstracts, MeSH terms and subheadings, etc.
• Author or Author - First will search any author by name or, specifically, any person who is listed as first author.
  • Best practice for PubMed is to use the last name and up to two initials, without punctuation (e.g., Seung HK). Use the autocomplete suggestions if desired.
• Journal will search journal titles.
  • PubMed only recognizes FULL journal titles or accepted abbreviations (e.g., The New England Journal of Medicine or N Engl J Med, but NOT New England Journal of Medicine or NEJM). It’s usually best to accept the autocomplete suggestions or use the index list (see below).

 G   Because you’re now working with more than one term, you can either click the AND button (for the default operator), or use the arrow to select OR or NOT from the dropdown menu. 

 H   Both concepts have now been added to the query box, which also shows the field that will be searched for the second term.

  I    At this point you can either click Search to run the search or select Add to History from the dropdown menu to add the query to your history without searching.

 NOTE  If you want to perform a field search but don't want to use the Advanced Search Builder, you can use field tags instead. Here’s a list of some of the most useful fields and their tags:

• Affiliation [ad] — Choose part of a title or institution
  • nurs* [ad]
  • Mayo [ad]
• Author [au] — Last name or last name first initial
  • O’Brien J [au]
• Journal [ta] — Journal title abbreviation, full journal title, or ISSN/eISSN number 
  • Am J Nurs [ta]
  • American Journal of Nursing [ta]
  • 1538-7488 [ta]
• MeSH Major Topic [majr] — Choose a term that appears in the MeSH Database
  • infusions, intravenous [majr] 
• MeSH Terms [mh] — Choose a term that appears in the MeSH Database
  • infusions, intravenous [mh]
• Text Words [tw] — Words you want to find in the text of an item, but not necessarily in the Title or Abstract
  • venous catheter [tw]
• Title [ti] — Words you want to find in the title 
  • venous catheter [ti]
• Title/Abstract [tiab] — Words you want to find in either the Title or the Abstract
  • venous catheter [tiab]

Below the query box is the History and Search Details section. Here you’ll find a record of the searches you have run—or those you have added without running—numbered consecutively with the most recent search at the top of the list. You can perform a number of actions on these searches. As explained on the Reviewing Search Details page, you can check to see how well PubMed has translated your keywords into an effective query. You can also see the number of results for each search and the time it was performed.

To add terms or concepts to already-run searches,

 J   Enter the new term to the query box. 

 K   Choose the appropriate “Add with” operator from the Actions menu. The Builder will connect the searches with AND unless you change it to OR or NOT. You can also delete a search from your history. (​​ TIP  If one of your searches produces 0 results, you may be tempted to delete it, but sometimes it can be helpful to know you’ve already tried a search and been unsuccessful.) To save a search to your My NCBI account (see the My NCBI page), click Create alert and say no to accepting update emails.

Occasionally, a query formulated by PubMed will need to be tweaked to eliminate results that aren't especially helpful. To do this,

 L   Copy the full PubMed-created query. 

 M   Paste it into the query box and edit is as necessary. In this example, I removed the portions of the query that looked for individual words (but kept the phrases those words are part of), removed the incorrect plural forms of babies, and added the word baby. Click Search or select Add to History from the dropdown menu. (​​ TIP  You will seldom need to edit queries in this way, but if you do, pay close attention to the nesting of terms [represented by parentheses]).

 N   The newly altered query appears as a new search. The changes we made reduced our results by 460 items. 

PubMed allows you to view and select from an alphabetical display of terms appearing in selected PubMed search fields. You can browse by all fields (as shown in the image below) or within specific fields such as MeSH Terms or MeSH Major Topic.

 O   To jump to the term you're interested in, such as nonhodgkin, begin typing it and click Show Index to see terms. Notice there are several misspellings for this term (two of which appear in 3 citations), and there are numerous terms that include a hyphen, as well (not shown); you may find it worthwhile to include common misspellings and alternate terms in your search query, using the Search Builder procedure outlined in  B  through   I   above (e.g., "nonhodgkin"[All Fields] OR "non-hodgkin"[All Fields] OR "nonhodgekin"[All Fields]), provided PubMed hasn't already done so! 

 P   If we show the index for the completed word nonhodgkin, we see it appears in more than 41,000 citations. (Not shown is the term non-hodgkin lymphoma, which appears in an additional 33,000 citations.)