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PubMed @ UMSL: Beyond Basics

Step-by-step guide to PubMed's advanced features.

Search Details

The most effective, targeted searches employ both keywords and MeSH terms. To make sure PubMed is successfully translating your keywords into MeSH terms, you’ll need to look at the search details.

 A   To access the details on a search you just ran, click the Advanced link below the search box.

Screenshot of Advanced link below PubMed search box, circled and labeled A.
 

 B   At the bottom of the resulting page, below the Advanced Search Builder, is a section labeled History and Search Details.

 C   Toggle open the Details of a particular search to show exactly how PubMed interpreted your keywords. The image below shows how the blood draw babies query was mapped, first as a full query and then as translations of the individual components. Notice that, without any effort on your part, PubMed knew to:

  • Consider blood draw a phrase
  • Look for alternate (yet incorrect) spellings of babies
  • Search for corresponding MeSH terms for both blood draw (blood specimen collection) and babies (infant)
  • Look for both full phrases and groups of individual words in all fields

The only thing it didn’t include was the singular baby; however, the inclusion of infant as a MeSH term covers that potential lapse.

Screenshot of advanced search builder, with two sections circled and labeled B & C. B: History and Search Details section header at bottom of results page. C: Expanded Details section on top bar under B header, with translation of keywords into MeSH terms and full query.


Sometimes your search results are not what you expected. When this happens, you can check the details to see if something went wrong during the translation process.

Suppose we want to find articles that discuss how PPE (personal protective equipment) can prevent skin injury among hospital staff.

Our first search query—ppe skin injury prevention—produced only 22 results. A look at the details shows how our keywords, and their order, affected PubMed’s translations:

  •  D   PubMed didn’t recognize the acronym PPE as a MeSH term and didn’t know to spell it out as personal protective equipment. Instead, it looked for the journal PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) and searched for the acronym PPE as a keyword.
  •  E   It didn’t group the words skin and injury as a phrase. Instead, it looked for the word skin as both a MeSH term and a keyword, and . . .
  •  F   It grouped injury prevention as a phrase. This didn’t necessarily hurt us, but it did cause PubMed to include a search for the journal Injury Prevention, which may not be helpful.

Screenshot of translation of terms for example search ppe skin injury prevention, with three sections labeled D-F. D: ppe translation to Polit Philos Econ. E: Translation of skin that correctly found the wider MeSH term. F: Incorrectly grouped translation for injury prevention.
 

Our second query—personal protective equipment prevention skin injury—created a much more robust and successful search with 677 results. The details show that:

  •  G   PubMed searched for personal protective equipment as both a MeSH term and a keyword.
  •  H   It translated the word prevention on its own, which allowed it to look for multiple variations of the word prevent. It also looked for the MeSH subheading prevention and control.
  •   I    It looked for the word skin as both a MeSH term and a keyword.
  •  J   It searched for variations of the word injury, as well as the MeSH subheading injuries and the MeSH term wounds and injuries.

Screenshot of altered search from previous example with corrective changes, with sections circled and labeled G-J. G: Search term personal protective equipment that found the relating MeSH term and keyword. H: Expanded search for prevention and related terms. I: Expanded search for skin that found the relating MeSH term and keyword. J: Expanded search for injury that found the relating MeSH term and keyword.