Instructions for using PubMed to access scientific journal articles, including basic search and limiting tips.

1. PubMed: Basic Search, Limiting, andScientific Journal Articles Kay CunninghamLibrary Director Christian Brothers University August 2010

2. http://pubmed.gov PubMed is available free online from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM). There are many ways of searching PubMed: Simultaneously with other NCBI databases using the Entrez cross-database searcher; using its own Basic Search; searching subsets; searching for authors, journals, clinical information; field searching and other advanced options.

3. PubMed Homepage

4. PubMed helps you choose search terms. When you enter a word, an automatic list will be generated listing possibilities.

5. Results List

6. With 19 million (and growing) citations in the database, a basic search will generate more hits than you may want. Use Limits to focus your results. One of the limits is to free full text.

7. Once you activate limits, they will continue to be applied to your search results until you change or remove them.

8. PMC or FREE?: PMC (PubMed Central) is a database within a database. PMC is a collection of medical journals that make their articles available for free in compliance with NIH grants’ regulations. While you can search PubMed Central separately, all PMC results also display in PubMed. In addition, many medical publishers—whether contributing to PMC or not—make articles available for free. PubMed also links to these articles, making PubMed a useful tool for finding free fulltext articles.

9. Other Available Limits Type of Article Subsets For example, Clinical Trials Editorials Practice Guidelines Reviews* Historical Articles Interviews Twin Studies AIDS Bioethics Cancer Complementary Medicine Core Clinical Journals History of Medicine Space Science Toxicology And more … Age, Gender, etc. *Review articles, or literature reviews, are particularly useful if you are looking for an overview.

10. Abstract The Abstract view includes much helpful material: related citations (notice how the Review articles are indicated), a link to all related reviews, links to information in other NCBI databases, and your recent activity in PubMed.

11. Fulltext

12. Regarding Fulltext PubMed is an indexing/abstracting database It is not a source of fulltext articles itself. Publishers may provide links to their articles through PubMed’s abstracts, but Access to the fulltext is at the publishers’ discretion. If links are displayed, but do not include “Free” indicators, then access depends on personal or institutional subscriptions to individual journals. If you are only interested in seeing free fulltext on your results list, use the Limits.

13. Other Links and Interconnections among NCBI databases Using the links in the abstracts can lead you to related information, such as chemical compounds mentioned in an article and images of structures.

14. Other Tools

15. Other handouts PubMed: Searching and Search Features PubMed: Working with Results Lists My NCBI