Searching PubMed

Introductory PubMed Tutorial

Presenter: Mary Beth Foster

Audience: Students, College of Medicine

PubMed• Developed and maintained by the National

Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)– at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)– located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

• Contains over 5484 medical or related journals• References over 20 million citations• Frequently updated• Articles indexed by subject experts• Indexed with controlled vocabulary

– MESH [Medical Subject Headings]

Introduction to PubMed•Simple Search Strategies

•Brainstorming•Building a plan

•Boolean Operators•AND•OR•NOT

•Limits•Article Type•Subsets•Sex•Age•Species•Text options•Languages

•MESH terms•Medical Subject Headings•Automatic mapping in search results

•Filters

Before You Search Think about the 6 W’s• Who• What• Where• When• Why • hoW

Do a little Brainstorming

Brainstorming6 W’s

• Who• What• Where• When• Why• hoW

Sample Search Topic

• children• Food allergies• global• Childhood onset• Why/how do children develop food

allergies? Is there a relationship between mother’s diet during pregnancy?

PubMed uses Boolean Operators

Building a Search Plan

AND – includes all search terms

OR – includes any search term

NOT – excludes a search term

Visualize your search.•Identify key search terms•Group terms that go together•Identify Boolean operators to

include or exclude terms

Food AND Allergies

Diet AND PregnancyChildren

AND

Building a Search Plan

1) Review search terms.

food allergies diet pregnancy children

2) Determine whether to set Limits.

Children can be omitted as a search term by setting Age Limit to 0 – 18.

• Article Type• Subsets• Sex• Age• Species• Text options• Languages

Limits

Building a Search Plan

3) Decide which Boolean connectors to use, if any.

Options:

a) food AND allergies AND diet AND pregnancy

b) food allergies diet pregnancy

•AND is added by default to search

•Use CAPS for AND, OR, NOT

•Order is searched from left to right

•Automatic phrase parsing

Search Tips

Which option Would youChoose?

Search Option

food AND allergies AND diet AND

PregnancyNOT

asthma

Let’s explore PubMed!http://www.ahsl.arizona.edu/

Learn about Automatic Term Mapping to MESH terms (Medical Subject Headings)Repeat SearchesView Search Query TranslationLook at

LimitsFiltersRelated CitationsAdvanced Search Options

Search BuilderSearch History