Searching PubMed

Search fields/accesses  Affiliation [AD]: Harvard Medical School[ad]  Author [AU]: Leon DA[au]  Issue [IP]:The number of the journal issue in which the article was published.  Journal Title [TA]: J Biol Chem[ta], Journal of Biological Chemistry[ta]  Language [LA]: eng[la]  MeSH Major Topic [MAJR]  MeSH Terms [MH]

Search fields/accesses  Pagination [PG]  Publication Date [DP]:The date that the article was published. Format: YYYY/MM/DD [dp], “ last X days ” [dp], “ last X months ” [dp] o r “ last X year ” [dp]  Publication Type [PT] : review[pt]  Title [TI]  Title/Abstract [TIAB]  Volume [VI] : The number of the journal volume in which an article is published. EC/RN Number [RN] Number assigned by the Enzyme Commission (EC) to designate a particular enzyme or by the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) for Registry Numbers, e.g., [rn] A RN – a substance name An ISSN – a journal name

Search by author

PubMed truncates this search to include varying middle initials and designations such as Jr. or 2 nd.

You can search for multiple authors. Enter each name in the author search format.

The search result:

To search for an author using only the last name, enter the name followed by the author search tag,[au].

For citations from 2002 forward for journals that publish the full names, you can search by the full author name.

As shown in the above figure, even when you search by the full name, citations display in the format: lastname + initials.

For some names, it is necessary to distinguish which name is the last name by using a comma following the last name. In this example, we are searching for James Ryan, rather than Ryan James. See the following result:

For a simple way to find author names in PubMed, use the Advanced Search page.

Searching by Author and Subject

Simple Subject Search To search PubMed, enter your search terms in the search box and click Search. Let’s try a search for the causes of sleep walking.

Search for a journal

Note that if you are searching for a journal title that is also a subject term, you need to use the search tag [ta].

Boolean operators The logical relationships among search terms, AND, OR, NOT, must be entered in UPPERCASE letters. AND Used to retrieve a set in which each citation contains all search terms Example: boat AND sail AND is the default operator used in PubMed. If you don’t include operators in your search, PubMed will automatically use AND between terms The retrieval is only the overlap of the results for each term – those record in which both terms appear. boat sail

Boolean operators NOT Retrieves a set from which citations to articles containing specified search terms following the NOT operator are eliminated. Example: boat NOT sail The retrieval is a portion of the total retrieval for boat, - that portion not including the term sail. boat sail boat sail OR Used to retrieve a set in which each citation contains at least one of the search terms Example: boat OR sail Use OR when you want to pull together articles on similar topics

Limits function in Advanced Search Page Limits allow you to set commonly used parameters for your query, which may result in more relevant retrieval.

Display format Source Author(s )

Combining searches (History) Previous searches can be combined or used in subsequent searches using the search statement number from History. Previous searches can be combined or used in subsequent searches using the search statement number from History.

 Via “ send to ” to save all the citations your searched as a text file  Via “ file - save as ” menu to save citations on the displaying screen as html