Select the appropriate subject heading and click on Add to search builder 3. Search for articles tagged with the subject heading by clicking on Search PubMed Page 7 A list of articles tagged with the subject heading “Smoking Cessation” will be displayed Don’t start looking at these now. We’re going to look at searching …

To search for primary research articles go to the PubMed home page. Click on Clinical Queries – the 4th option in the PubMed Tools (the middle of 3 columns). Enter your search terms and click on the search box. Now click on See All and follow steps 3 to 5 above.

Searching PubMed For a basic keyword search, type the word or words you are looking for into the search box, and click Search. PubMed will suggest phrases that complete your entry or that are related to the words you’re entering. The next page will show your search results.

Hints for Improving Search Results

1. Look for misspellings in your strategy.
2. Decrease the number of concepts searched.
3. Try a broader search term.
4. Use a term from the thesaurus (i.e., MeSH or subject heading list) for searching.
5. Use the Related Articles feature.
6. Check for missing or incorrect field qualifiers.

Author & Journal Navigation To retrieve all citations from the displayed journal, click the journal’s name and the select Search in PubMed from the dropdown menu. When you click on an author’s name, a PubMed search will be run automatically.

In PubMed, first type the search term and then the field tag in brackets. e.g. Cardiology [TIAB] looks for cardiology in the title and abstract. [All Fields] or [ALL] – Untagged terms and terms tagged with [all fields] are processed using Automatic Term Mapping.

PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

Boolean Searching on PubMed PubMed provides for Boolean searching. You may run a Boolean search from any search box, but the roomiest screen is available in Boolean Search. To reach the Boolean Search box: click on Advanced Search, and then Click on Boolean Search.

Untagged terms that are entered in the PubMed search box are automatically mapped to the MeSH vocabulary when a match is found. However, you may choose to search the MeSH headings specifically using search field tags (also called qualifiers).

Once MeSH terms have been searched, terms will appear in a box labelled “Search details,” located beside the list of the results on the right side of the screen. This box will display how each term has been searched, and can be useful for editing your search.

However, you may choose to search the MeSH headings specifically using search field tags (also called qualifiers). Note :Searching with MeSH subject terms excludes citations that have not yet been fully indexed, citations that are out of scope, and others that do not (or do not yet) include MeSH subject terms.

Boolean operators are used to combine search terms. In PubMed, you can use the operators AND, OR, and NOT. Go to the “Advanced Search” page to combine searches. This is where your search history is located during your search session.