What is PubMed?
"PubMed is a free resource developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine® (NLM)."
PubMed is the standard database that is used in the healthcare profession. It can link to full-text articles, provides advance researching including filtering and special queries and links to related articles.
PubMed is a free interface for searching MEDLINE, the most popular bibliographic database in the health and medical sciences. It contains references to millions of journal articles from biomedical journals and is updated daily.
The search function is extremely user-friendly, and the filtering options allow for searching clinical trials, full text, and even publication dates. The search function also provides related searches and data. Once an article is selected, similar articles are included in the record.
What is the difference between PubMed and PubMed Central?
PubMed and PubMed Central are two different systems.
PubMed is a citation database. PubMed does not display the full text of articles but instead comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites such as Science Direct. Publishers participating in PubMed electronically submit their citations to National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) prior to or at the time of publication. PubMed also provides links to biological resources, consumer health information, research tools, and more. There may be a charge to access some text or information.
To access PubMed, please click here.
To view frequently asked questions concerning PubMed, please click here.
PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital archive database of full-text scientific literature in biomedical and life sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), developed and managed by NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the National Library of Medicine (NLM). PubMed Central provides openly available peer-reviewed scientific research. Please note: some full Open Access journals send all the articles to PMC regardless of funding source. In PMC there will be a link to the full text article published on Science Direct, accessible by clicking the header above the article title.
To access PubMed Central, please click here.
To view frequently asked questions concerning PubMed Central, please click here.
How to do a search on PubMed?
Keywords to start your search will likely come from your PICO question: the subject, intervention, and/or outcome. Most likely, your initial search will result in hundreds, if not thousands, of articles. Use the filters to add information related to patient age or filter articles of a certain research methodology or article type.
Adding additional keywords to your search can also help you narrow down the focus of your search: treatment, pathophysiology (how does the disease process work), diagnosis, tests, etc. As you progress in your search, you will encounter articles whose titles will have keywords of their own. Perhaps you will notice the name of a drug of interest that keeps appearing in searches; this could be added to the search to narrow the focus on that specific drug.
Your ability to conduct searches through databases like PubMed is a skill that can be improved over time. As you learn more in the world of clinical science, your background knowledge and intuition grow and develops, improving your sense of what to look for and how to approach your search.
Using PubMed
Following the directions below use, PubMed.gov Links to an external site.to complete a search on COVID-19.
How to do a basic search in PubMed?
1. Identify the key concepts for your search.
2. Enter the terms (or key concepts) in the search box.
3. Press the Enter key or click Search.
How to do an advanced search in PubMed?
For many searches, it is not necessary to use special tags or syntax. PubMed uses multiple tools to help you find relevant results:
· Best Match sort order uses a state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithm to place the most relevant citations at the top of your results.
· An autocomplete feature displays suggestions as you type your search terms. This feature is based on PubMed query log analysis described in " Finding Query Suggestions for PubMed Links to an external site."
· A spell-checking feature suggests alternative spellings for search terms that may include misspellings.
· A citation sensor displays suggested results for searches that include terms characteristic of citation searching, e.g., author names, journal titles, publication dates, and article titles.
The key is to play around with your search parameters to refine your search. Add items and be more specific to narrow the focus of your search. Remove items and/or be more general to broaden your search. Searching for similar articles is also a very useful tool.
I retrieved too many citations. How can I focus my search?
To limit the number of search results:
· Replace general search terms with more specific ones (e.g., low back pain instead of back pain).
· Include additional terms in your query.
· Use the sidebar filters to restrict results by publication date, full-text availability, article type, and more.
I retrieved too few citations. How can I expand my search?
· On the abstract page for a citation, see the Similar Articles Links to an external site. section for a pre-calculated set of additional PubMed citations closely related to that article.
· Remove extraneous or specific terms from the search box.
· Try using alternative terms to describe the concepts you are searching for.
Taken from the PubMed User Guide (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/help/#how-do-i-search-pubmed Links to an external site.)
PubMed® Online Training (nih.gov)
What is an Abstract? [1]
An abstract is a short summary of your completed research. It is intended to describe your work without going into detail. Abstracts should be self-contained and concise, explaining your work as briefly and clearly as possible.
It is a short summary of the major points of a research paper and is used as a screening tool. Researchers use abstracts to quickly identify whether the full journal article matches their needs and interests. Similarly, publishers or conference organizers use the abstract to determine whether the research is a good fit for their publication or presentation.
An abstract includes the article's purpose, methods, major findings, and conclusions using a system called IMRaD: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. IMRaD mirrors the sections of the full research article, which discuss those same topics in greater detail.
Definition and Purpose of Abstracts
An abstract is a short summary of your (published or unpublished) research paper, usually about a paragraph (c. 6-7 sentences, 150-250 words) long. A well-written abstract serves multiple purposes:
an abstract lets readers get the gist or essence of your paper or article quickly, in order to decide whether to read the full paper.
an abstract prepares readers to follow the detailed information, analyses, and arguments in your full paper.
and, later, an abstract helps readers remember key points from your paper.
It’s also worth remembering that search engines and bibliographic databases use abstracts, as well as the title, to identify key terms for indexing your published paper. So what you include in your abstract and in your title are crucial for helping other researchers find your paper or article.)
There are 5 sections in the Abstract:
1. Title and Author:
This section is important because, when researching, you see the title first. Titles give a very summary of what the research is about and enable you to decide quickly whether the research is relevant and significant. Additionally, the author's information tells you who did the research. The authors' names can add credibility to the research, particularly if one or more of the researchers has a previous body of work.
2. Introduction:
This section briefly outlines the question to be addressed by the research. If space permits, the introduction may briefly review previous research related to the question, any unresolved issues relating to that issue, and how this research study fills that gap.
3. Method
This section describes how the research was done, including the experimental methods used, the research setting, how many subjects were used, how those subjects were selected, a description of any medical interventions used in the study (medications, procedures, etc.), the types of data collected, and any statistical analyses performed.
4. Results
This section presents the data collected. Usually, the data is presented in an easy-to-read table form and emphasizes comparisons between variables and differences between subgroups. The results section may also mention if any subjects needed to be removed from the study and the reasons for their removal.
5. Conclusion
This section briefly states what can be concluded based on the data obtained from the study.
[1] Writing a Medical Research Abstract | ACP (acponline.org)