Characteristics and Features of PubMed
- PubMed is a free search engine accessing the MEDLINE database.
- Maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM).
- PubMed was released in January 1996.
- PubMed offers access to over 35 million citations and abstracts.
- PubMed has links to full-text versions of articles.
- PubMed's interface was updated in October 2009.
- The website design and domain were updated in January 2020.
- Researchers had a critical reaction to the site changes.
- The results on PubMed can be sorted by various criteria.
- A mobile-friendly version of PubMed is available.
Search and Retrieval Options in PubMed
- Simple searches on PubMed can be done by entering key aspects of a subject.
- PubMed automatically adds relevant terms, synonyms, and Boolean operators to enhance the search.
- PubMed offers comprehensive search options using MeSH terms.
- Reference librarians and search specialists can assist with complex searches.
- The use of MeSH terms provides more accurate and relevant results.
- PubMed supports Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) for combining search terms.
- MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) can be used to improve search precision.
- Truncation and wildcard symbols can be used to expand search terms.
- Filters and limits can be applied to narrow down search results.
- PubMed offers tools for advanced searching and topic searching.
Journal Article Parameters in PubMed
- PubMed extracts and stores structured information about journal articles.
- Parameters include article type, secondary identifiers, language, and publication history.
- Publication type parameter allows searching by the type of publication.
- Secondary identifiers include accession numbers and trial IDs.
- PubMed extracts trial IDs from ClinicalTrials.gov and other trial registries.
Related Features and Resources in PubMed
- PubMed has a 'related articles' feature to identify relevant articles.
- Related articles are listed based on their relatedness to the selected article.
- The related articles function can be used instead of a full search.
- PubMed automatically links to MeSH terms and subheadings.
- MeSH terms help in mapping and organizing the articles in PubMed.
- My NCBI provides tools for saving searches, filtering search results, setting up automatic updates sent by e-mail, saving sets of references retrieved as part of a PubMed search, and configuring display formats or highlighting search terms.
- LinkOut is an NLM facility to link and make available full-text local journal holdings.
- Over 3,200 sites, mainly academic institutions, participate in LinkOut.
- Users at participating institutions see their institution's logo within the PubMed search result if the journal is held at that institution.
- PubMed Commons allows authors of articles indexed by PubMed to comment on articles.
- Initially tested in pilot mode since 2013 and made permanent in 2016.
- Discontinued in February 2018 due to minimal usage.
Other Tools and Resources Related to PubMed
- MEDLINE is a subset of PubMed that focuses on articles in the field of medicine.
- askMEDLINE is a free-text, natural language query tool for MEDLINE/PubMed.
- Developed by the NLM and suitable for handhelds.
- PubMed Central (PMC) is a digital archive of full-text articles.
- MedEvi is a tool for retrieving evidence of relations between biomedical concepts from Medline.
- PubCrawler is a tool for keeping up with new articles in PubMed and GenBank.
- PMID (PubMed identifier or PubMed unique identifier) is a unique integer value assigned to each PubMed record.
- PMID is not the same as PMCID (PubMed Central identifier), which is the identifier for works published in PubMed Central.
- The assignment of a PMID or PMCID does not indicate the type or quality of the content.
- PMIDs are assigned to various types of publications, including peer-reviewed papers, letters to the editor, and editorial opinions.
- Any reference in PubMed can be located using the PMID.
PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain the database as part of the Entrez system of information retrieval.
 | |
| Contact | |
|---|---|
| Research center | United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) |
| Release date | January 1996 |
| Access | |
| Website | pubmed |
From 1971 to 1997, online access to the MEDLINE database had been primarily through institutional facilities, such as university libraries. PubMed, first released in January 1996, ushered in the era of private, free, home- and office-based MEDLINE searching. The PubMed system was offered free to the public starting in June 1997.
