Library Guides: HIP202 Research Skills Guide: PubMed (2024)

Basic Search

Use the main search box.PubMed will automatically try to match your terms to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH terms), and search for those terms as well as the terms you entered. In effect, PubMed does a keyword search and a mapped MeSH search at the same time. This means you "get the best of both worlds" without having to think about it too much.

Just type in your topic terms and let PubMed match to, and search for, MeSH terms for you. Here are the results of a search for information on stroke and communication(8638 results):

If you want to know what search has actually been run:

1. after the search has been run, click on Advanced [Search]
2. in the History and Search Details panel, click on the arrow in the Details column beside your search.

This will show you exactly what PubMed searched for, and how your terms were "translated".

In this case, stroke, and communication, were matched to a number of like terms, including the MeSH terms stroke and communication.

Advanced Search and the MeSH Database

If you want more control over your searching you can go to Advanced Search and use the Advanced Search Builder to search for terms only in certain fields, including MeSH fields. This is also where you can view, and use, your Search History.

If you want to build a search using MeSH terms, and are not sure of which terms to use, you can click on the link to the MeSH database, in the More Resources column on the PubMed home page. Here you can search for, match to, and select MeSH terms, and add them into the Search Builder. But these are more complex processes, and, if you want to learn more, see the links to Help, below.

Filters

In your results list, you can use the filters (limiters) on the left side of the screen to refine your results. There is a large range of filters available.

Full-text

Many PubMed records will include a link to the full item, often in a resource known as PubMed Central. In addition to that, if you go to PubMed from a listing on the Charles Sturt Library databases pages, and go to the full record of an article, you can use the link to locate the full article.