Getting the Most out of PubMed Medline: Searching

Getting started searching in PubMed is pretty straightforward - you just need to understand what the database does with your search terms.

Briefly, when you enter your search into the box, PubMed will analyze your terms and add related terms to your search.  These related terms will include synonyms and the appropriate Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms.

To learn more about searching in New PubMed, click the image to the right for brief video tutorials on how to Pubmed uses automatic term mapping and MeSH terms to find citations for you!

There are a number of tricks you can use to enhance your PubMed searches.

• Use Boolean Operators and parentheses to build searches
• Use truncation to broaden searches
• Use quotation marks to search for phrases
• Use the Filters sidebar to limit search results
• Use the Advanced Search Builder to create more targeted searches, combine searches, and more
• Use proximity search to search for multiple terms appearing in any order within a specified distance of on another in the title or the title & abstract fields.

Knowing how to use these techniques - on their own and together - will help you narrow your search when you have too many irrelevant results as well as broaden your search when your search when it's too limited.

Here are a few more tutorial videos on different types of searches: