Please note: links in this page open in a new window or tab.

PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's search interface for MEDLINE.

MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) premier bibliographic database. MEDLINE contains over 16 million citations and abstracts dating back to the early 1950s in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, public health, veterinary medicine, health care systems, and preclinical sciences.

MEDLINE is the primary component of PubMed, which is one of many databases provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the NLM.

In addition to MEDLINE citations, PubMed also contains:

• Records to articles before the are indexed and added to MEDLINE
• Citations to articles that are out of MEDLINE’s scope, primarily general science and general chemistry journals
• Some health sciences journals that submit open access full-text to PubMedCentral

PubMed special features:

• Limits (e.g., language, gender, age)
• Spell Checker
• Citation links to related articles
• Clinical Queries
• Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
• MyNCBI (customization tools for saving searching, search alerts, etc.)

Practical Tips for using PubMed

PubMed’s search interface provides easy navigation for beginners; you can often get relevant results by entering a few keywords. This success is largely due to PubMed automatically mapping your keywords to Medical Subject Headings when it finds a recognizable term. However, PubMed is loaded with extra features to help you search more effectively and manage your results. Here are a few links to guides and tutorials available through PubMed:

• PubMed Basics Handout [PDF]: an introduction to all available features.
• Search by Author [video tutorial]
• Search by Journal [video tutorial]
• Search PubMed with Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) Handout [PDF]: MeSH is the controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles in MEDLINE. MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to retrieve relevant information.
• Searching with the MeSH database [video tutorial]
• MyNCBI Handout [PDF]: MyNCBI is tool that allows you to save and manage searches, set-up automatic email notifications, and use document delivery services
• MyNCBI [video tutorial]

PubMed Clinical Queries and Evidence-Based Practice

The PubMed Clinical Queries page provides three specialized searches:

• Search by Clinical Study Category
• Finding Systematic Reviews
• Medical Genetics Searches

Designed for busy health professionals, Clinical Queries offers a user-friendly approach to evidence-based searching on the Medline database. Clinical Queries is not intended to supply a comprehensive literature search, but provide a few articles which will help the health professional make informed health-related decisions. Clinical Queries is divided into three sections:

Clinical Studies: uses pre-set research methodology filters that enable the searcher to quickly locate relevant literature on etiology, diagnosis, therapy, prognosis, and clinical prevention guides.

Systematic Reviews: this search finds citations for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, reviews of clinical trials, evidence-based medicine, consensus development conferences, and guidelines.

Medical Genetics: uses a pre-set medical genetics search filters that enable the search to quickly locate relevant literature on various topics in medical genetics.

Research Tip: Your search in Clinical Studies will only work if you select the appropriate search category.

UIC users: for information on accessing full text articles via PubMed, please see UIC resources.

Next page >>