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DATABASE FEATURES
SEARCH ENGINE FEATURES
SIMPLE SEARCH
RESULTS PAGE
ADVANCED SEARCH
BOOLEAN SEARCH
 
 

 

DATABASE FEATURES

Scope & Coverage

• Includes MEDLINE, PREMEDLINE, HEALTH STAR and Publisher-Supplied citations
• 1966-Present
• Approximately 10 Million records
• Close to 4,000 current journals in English and 70 foreign languages are indexed
• Fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care system, preclinical sciences

PreMedline

• Provides basic citation information and abstracts before the full records are prepared and added to MEDLINE.
• After MeSH terms, Publication Types, GenBank accession numbers, and other indexing data are added, the completed records are added weekly to MEDLINE, and deleted from the interim PREMEDLINE database

Link Out  (Full Text  Articles via PubMed)

• Link Out is a system that provides  links to journal web pages via PubMed
• This system will allow you to access full text of articles from online journals available through TMC Library
• Link Out is not available for all journals
• All restrictions for journal availability such as limited number of simultaneous users, vendor and publisher requirements (i.e. registration) also apply to full text journals via PubMed
• For a listing of full-text journals available through HAM-TMC Library visit the following site: (www.library.tmc.edu/accesslevels.html)

Coffee Break

• Coffee Break, a new site hosted by NCBI, combines short reports on recent biological discoveries with interactive tutorials on bio-informatic tools

Search Journal Subsets

• The following journal subsets are available to search:
• -AIM (Abridged Index Medicus)
• -Dental
• -Nursing
• -AIDS
• -MEDLINE
• -Publisher
• -PubRef

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SEARCH ENGINE FEATURES

Simple Search

• Perform simple keyword searches
• Does not allow you to qualify or combine terms (unless you use Boolean syntax)
• Does not allow you to apply limits (unless you use Boolean syntax)

Advanced Search

• Perform advanced searches
• Use specific search fields, combine terms, apply limits

Journal Title Search

• Search for Journal Titles in PubMed (journal title words, abbreviation, ISSN)

MeSH Browser

• Browse the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) index in PubMed

Citation Matcher

• Find full citation for articles using partial citation information

Clinical Query

• Search a customized search engine for clinical queries

Clipboard

• Save selected search results in the Clipboard
• You can save up to 500 citations from different search sessions
• Items will be lost after an hour of inactivity

History

• Combine results from different searches

Save Search Strategies

• Use Details feature to save search strategies for future use

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SIMPLE SEARCH

Perform Search

• Enter search terms in the search field
• Click on Go button

Automatic Term Mapping

• Unqualified terms that are entered in the query box are matched against a MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) Translation table, a Journals Translation table, a phrase list, and an Author index

Author Search

• Enter author's name in the format of last name plus initials (no punctuation), e.g., smith ja

Truncation (finding all terms that begin with a given text string):

• Place an asterisk at the end of a term to search for all terms that begin with that word; for instance bacter* will find all terms that begin with the letters bacter; e.g., bacteria, bacterium, bacteriophage, etc.

Phrase Search

• To force the PubMed system to search for a phrase, put the phrase in quotation marks, e.g., "congestive heart failure"

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RESULTS PAGE

Display Results

• Select citations by checking boxes next to author links
• Click on the Display menu
• Choose Display format such as:
• Summary: Complete citation including author, title, date, volume, etc.
• Abstract: Everything in the Summary plus the abstract of the article
• Medline: Everything in Abstract plus MeSH headings
•    Note: Use MEDLINE display format for importing PubMed citations into bibliographic management  databases (i.e. EndNote)
• Click on Display button to display results

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Plain Text Display

• Check boxes next to citations
• Choose display format from the Display menu
• Click on Text option
• PubMed displays the plain text version of the citation

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Link Out (Full Text Articles via PubMed)

• Display results from a search in PubMed
• Choose Link Out from the Display menu
• Click on Dislplay
• PubMed displays the Link Out links to the sources for the full text of articles online
• Click on the link provided
• You will see the full text of the article available online
• This procedure will work only for full text journals available through TMC Library
• For a listing of Full Text journals through TMC Library go to the following URL:

(www.library.tmc.edu/accesslevels.html)

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See Search Strategy

• Click on Details button to see the details of the search strategy used by PubMed

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Change Number of Citations Per Page

• Click on the Show pull down menu to change the number of documents per page
• Click on the Go button to redisplay the results

Select Result Pages

• Click on the page number links to see the results on different pages

Print Results

• Select results to be printed by checking boxes next to citations
• Display results using the desired Display format
• Click on the Print option in your browser

Save Results

• Select citations to be saved
• Display the results to be saved by choosing a Display format
• Click on the Save option to save results

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Add Results to Clipboard

• Check the boxes next to author links
• Click on Add to Clipboard
• PubMed will save your selected results in a Clipboard
• Click on Clipboard from the Features bar to see the contents of the Clipboard

Note: You can add selected results to the clipboard from different search sessions

See Related Articles

• Click on  the Related Articles links to see a list of articles related to the topic of your selected article (in order of relevancy)

Note: You will lose your search strategy once you are in the Related Articles page.
• To go back to your previous result page click on the Back button of your browser

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ADVANCED SEARCH

Perform Search

• Enter search terms in the search field
• Click on the Go button

Use Search Fields

• Click on Limit option on Features bar
• Click on Fields pull down menu
• Select appropriate field (i.e. MeSH Major Topic)
• Click on Go button

 

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Combine Search Results

• Click on History  on the Features bar
• Combine search results using search numbers (i.e. #5 AND #1)
• Click on Go button

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Apply Limits

• Click on Limit option on the Features bar
• Select appropriate limits (Language, Publication Type, Publication Date, etc.)
• Click on Go to apply selected limits to search results

Note: Use the Index option to browse search field indexes in PubMed

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Browse Indexes

• This option allows you to browse different indexes in PubMed
• Click on Index option on the Features bar
• Choose an appropriate index to browse (i.e. Publication Type, Author, etc.)
• Enter terms in search field
• Click on View
• Select appropriate term from the index
• Use Boolean operators to create a new search strategy (AND, OR, NOT)
• Click on Go button

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Search Journal Subsets

• The following journal subsets are available from the Subset menu:
• AIDS
• AIM (Abridged Index Medicus)
• Dental
• MEDLINE
• Nursing
• PreMedline
• Publisher (citations provided by publishers)
• PubRef (if you select PubRef, your search will not be limited to only PubMed citations)

 

Save Search Strategies

• Click on Details button on the results page
• Click on  URL (this function will create a URL address for your Search Strategy)
• Save the URL using the browser  Save function  (you can save to a hard drive or a disk)
• To perform a search using the saved Search Strategy use your browser File option to Open saved URL location (this step will run the saved Search Strategy in PubMed again)

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Browse for Journal titles

• Click on Journal Browser option
• Choose search option (All Types, Title, ISSN, Medline Abbr.) and enter terms
• Click on Go button

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Browse Medical Subject Headings

• Click on MeSH Browser option
• Enter search terms
• Click on Go button
• Select a Medical Subject Heading
• Click on Add to create a search strategy
• Click on Detailed display to see related subheadings

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Select appropriate Subheadings

• Click on Add to create a new search strategy
• Click on PubMed Search

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Citation Matcher

• Use Citation Matcher to find full citations using partial citation information
• Click on Citation Matcher option (Single or Batch)

• Enter partial citation information such as  journal name , first page number, author name, etc.
• Click on Search

 

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Clinical Queries

• Click on Clinical Queries option
• Select a Category (Therapy, Diagnosis, Etiology, Prognosis)
• Select an Emphasis:
• Sensitivity: includes relevant articles but probably some less relevant
• Specificity: more precise articles, with less retrieval
• Click on Search

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BOOLEAN SEARCH

• search term [tag] BOOLEAN OPERATOR search term [tag]

Examples of Boolean Search Statements:
 

• Find citations that were authored by Crick on DNA in 1993.
• dna [mh] AND crick [au] AND 1993 [dp]

OR
By combining two or more query terms (or sets) using OR, a set will be created which contains all the documents containing any of the query terms (or sets) (with duplicates eliminated), e.g., "heart attack OR myocardial infarction."

AND
By combining two or more query terms (or sets) using AND, a set will be created which contains only those documents which have each and every query term (or set) , e.g., "blood pressure AND stroke."

NOT
By combining two query terms (or sets) using NOT, a set will be created that contains those documents with the first query term (or set), but which specifically excludes those documents with the second query term (or set), e.g., "health reform NOT health maintenance organizations."
 

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Important Search Field Tags

Affiliation [AD] Institutional affiliation and address of the first author, and grant numbers

All Fields [ALL] Includes all searchable PubMed fields

Author Name [AU] The format to search for an author name is: last name, followed by a space
and up to the first two initials, without periods (e.g., fauci as)

Date of Publication [DP] The date that the article was published. Dates or date ranges must be   searched using the format YYYmM/DD [dp], e.g. 1998/03/06 [dp]. The month and day are optional (e.g., 1998 [dp] or 1998/03 [dp]). To enter a date range, insert a colon (:) between each date (e.g., 1996:1998 [dp] or 1998/01:1998/04 [dp])

Issue [IP] The number of the journal issue in which the article is published

Journal Title [TA] The journal title abbreviation, full journal name, or ISSN number

Language [LA] The language in which the article was published

MeSH Major Topic [MAJR] A MeSH term that is one of the main topics discussed in the article. See MeSH Terms below

MeSH Terms [MH]  NLM's Medical Subject Headings controlled vocabulary of biomedical terms which is used to describe the subject of each journal article in MEDLINE

Page Number [PG]  Enter only the first page number that the article appears on

Publication Type [PT]  Describes the type of material the article represents (e.g., Review, Clinical Trial, Retracted Publication, Letter

Subheadings [SH] Subheadings are used with MeSH terms to help describe more completely a particular aspect of a subject

Substance Name [NM] The name of a chemical discussed in the article

Text Words [TW] Includes all words and numbers in the title and abstract, and MeSH terms, subheadings, chemical substance names, personal name as subject, and MEDLINE Secondary Source (SI) field

Title Words [TI] Words and numbers found in the title of an article

Volume [VI] The number of the journal volume in which an article is published
 

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