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Health & Medical Literature Searching

A step by step guide to the literature searching process & techniques

  • PubMed is a free web-based interface for searching MEDLINE, PubMed Central (PMC) & NCBI bookshelf
  • PubMed database contains more than 32 million citations & abstracts of biomedical literature. 
  • It does not include meeting abstracts, conference proceedings, dissertations, patents, or websites
  • MEDLINE is the largest component of PubMed & consists primarily of citations from more than 5600 journals selected for MEDLINE; all MEDLINE articles are indexed with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). 
  • NLM indexers add Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to the information about each article in Medline. 

PubMed Basic Quick Search

Basic Search Tips

Finding a few good articles on a specific topic is quick & easy.

You are looking for articles about chemotherapy & colorectal cancer. 

Type your keywords into the search box:  PubMed searches for keywords in the article title, abstract & subject headings. Results are automatically sorted by Best match (i.e. most relevant to your terms). Choose from the other DISPLAY OPTIONS to sort according to your needs.

 pubmed basic search screen

 

Advanced Search Tips

To run a more complex search select Advanced to:

  • use a combination of keywords & MeSH
  • incorporate Boolean operators, truncation & field tags
  • see how your search is interpreted by PubMed & make corrections if necessary.

The most valuable 17 minutes you will spend

Identifying search terms in PubMed

Filters & Field tags in PubMed