Searching the Health Sciences Databases

Enter the author's name in the following format: Author's Last Name Initials. Example: Corbie-Smith G

Note:

• No periods or commas are necessary.
• Adding the second initial can help focus the search on a particular person, but may cause you to miss articles published by the author that do not include the middle name.
• Searching by the authors full first name will work sometimes but not always, so it's better to use their initial(s). 

You can also search for a specific journal in PubMed and set up an alert to see new articles in your favorite journals.

1. Go to Advanced Search > select Journal from the menu on the left side.
2. Begin typing the name of the journal and recommendations should appear below the search box.
3. Select the journal you want from the recommendations list and click Add to put the Journal name into the Query (or Search) box.

If that does not work, you can try searching for the journal by title on the main search bar without the journal field. We don't recommend that as a first strategy because you might get results from several journals with similar names. 

To find a specific article when you know some of the publication information such as journal name, publication date, page numbers, author name, or title words, use the Single Citation Matcher form.

The link to Single Citation Matcher is on the PubMed homepage. It is the third item in the second-left section labeled Find, below the search box.

You only need to fill in a few data points.
Author Name and First Page often bring up a single result.

When you are viewing an article record, you can view a list of records for similar articles. 

PubMed uses an algorithm to compare words from each citation's Title and Abstract fields, as well as the assigned MeSH headings. The best matches for each citation are pre-calculated and stored as a set.

You may see a few citations without the Similar Articles link, which means that these citations have not yet gone through the algorithm. This process may take several days.

You can navigate to this section by clicking "Similar articles" under the "Page Navigation" section in the right column.

To search MeSH, click on the PubMed link below then click on "MeSH Database" under "Explore" near the bottom of the PubMed main page.

A record could merely contain the keywords you search for but not actually be about that subject.

Let's say that you wanted to research pulmonary cancer and cigarette smoking. Articles sometimes contain wording like this:

"Most research on lung cancer has examined connections with cigarette smoking. In this article, we examined pulmonary cancer and chewing tobacco."

These sentences contain terms relevant to our search, but the article is about something entirely different.

MeSH terms are applied to articles after someone from the National Library of Medicine has actually read the article. By labelling an article with MeSH terms, they are telling you what the article is about.

It is also important to search the MeSH terms to capture relevant articles that do not use the keywords you have entered.

When searching MeSH, keep in mind:

• Each search result that you see is a different subject heading. These are not article records!
• Sometimes more than one subject heading will be relevant for your search. Review the results and open any that may be useful.

Click on the question marks to find out more information about a Mesh page. 

There are 2 downsides to searching with MeSH terms. Both of them are related to time.

1. MeSH is not retroactive: When a new subject heading is introduced, NLM staff do not go back through previous years to apply the heading to earlier citations. You can tell how old a MeSH term is by looking at the "Year introduced" field. MeSH terms that have recently been introduced are likely to have been applied to fewer article records than MeSH terms that have existed for many years.
2. It takes time to apply subject headings to citations: For this reason, newer citations do not yet have subject headings.

For these reasons it is important that you search using keywords and MeSH terms!

Training Course
Learn how to use the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for expert PubMed searching in this hands-on, self-paced course.

PubMed maps your search terms to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the vocabulary NLM uses to describe articles, to augment your search with additional terms. Designed for librarians and other expert literature searchers in the health sciences, this course will help you better understand how PubMed uses MeSH and how you can take control of your PubMed topic searches for better precision or recall.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Recognize that MeSH is automatically included in PubMed searches and demonstrate how it improves your search results.

• Identify when you need to go beyond the automated features of PubMed in your topic searches (and when you do not).

• Document PubMed searches for formal queries.

• Explore MeSH and build PubMed searches using the MeSH Database.

• Accommodate unindexed records for comprehensive PubMed searches.

• Apply distinct techniques for special PubMed searches.

Access it here

Using the Search Builder isn't really difficult, but using it effectively can be a bit of a challenge. Here are the basics:

1. Use the MeSH Database's scope notes and topical hierarchy to find the most specific term you can.
2. Select any subheadings you feel are appropriate to your search.
3. Decide whether you want to restrict your search to MeSH Major Topic or forego automatic explosion; if yes, check one or both boxes.
4. Click the Add to search builder button.
5. Review the search details and make any necessary adjustments. Remember to clear it if you want to change your selections for a particular MeSH heading.
6. If necessary, add another term with subheadings and restrictions until your topic is covered. Combine the searches using AND (usually).
7. Click Search PubMed.

Below is an example of a search built around complications arising from eye removal. Note that I selected the MeSH term Eye Enucleation, with a subheading of adverse effects, and that I restricted my search to articles in which this is a major topic. (Because Eye Enucleation is the most specific term in its hierarchy, I didn't select the second restriction as it would have had no effect.)

You can see each of my selections reflected in the search details: "Eye Enucleation/adverse effects"[Majr]. At the time this search was run, it produced 72 highly relevant results.

Most concepts cannot be adequately described with a single MeSH term, so an effective search will require some advanced techniques. Here are a few examples of common search strategies. The terms in bold italics are ones you will search for in the MeSH Database. A forward slash (/) indicates that a subhead follows.  NOTE  It doesn't matter in what order concepts are ANDed together.

To find articles that discuss the use of a particular medication to treat a particular disease

Disease/drug therapy AND Drug/therapeutic use

 EXAMPLE  Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting/drug therapy AND Alemtuzumab/therapeutic use

To find articles that examine the use of a particular type of therapy in the rehabilitation of a particular condition

Condition/rehabilitation AND Type of Rehabilitation

 EXAMPLE  Hand injuries/rehabilitation AND Exercise Therapy

To find articles about a nurse's role in treating a particular condition

Type of Nurse AND Condition/nursing

 EXAMPLE  Orthopedic Nursing AND Hip Fractures/nursing