Research Guides: Getting Better Results with PubMed: What is PubMed?

Necia Parker-Gibson

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PubMed indexes the medical literature deeply

PubMed® includes more than 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, other life science journals, government reports and online books. It is also one of the better ways to find literature for veterinary science, public health, dentistry, and a more limited source of architecture, nutrition and social work literature, though there are other databases that provide more or different coverage for those subjects, such as:

Food Science and Technology Abstracts for nutrition and food safety or
Social Work Abstracts for social work.

Citations may include links to full text content from the Libraries, from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. If the article isn't attached, use the FindIt button to get to it or to use Illiad to borrow it.

If you use limits on your search, to types of study, date ranges and the like, PubMed tends to hold onto them. This may be more of a problem if you are searching different topics or if you are sharing a computer. If you aren't getting the results you expected, this may be part of it.

Note: searching in PubMed is different from searching in other related databases, just as it may vary among the several versions of Medline we have. Please ask for help if you need it.

For the future: Researchers at Stanford have been using PubMed as a Large Language Model or LLM to develop an AI application to search it better or at least automatically. It's coming but it's not here yet.

PubMed This link opens in a new window
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Covers: 1950-. A service of the National Library of Medicine that includes citations from MEDLINE and 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. Offers comprehensive coverage of all areas of human and veterinary medicine, dentistry, nutrition, toxicology, pathology, public health, and health services administration.
CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window
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Covers 1937-.A comprehensive source for nursing and related fields, covering 50 nursing specialties, speech and language pathology, nutrition, general health and medicine and more. CINAHL also indexes books and dissertations."

ClinicalTrials.gov
"ClinicalTrials.gov is a website and online database of clinical research studies and information about their results. The purpose of ClinicalTrials.gov is to provide information about clinical research studies to the public, researchers, and health care professionals. The U.S. government does not review or approve the safety and science of all studies listed on this website."

Additional Databases and Resources

MEDLINE Complete (Ebsco) This link opens in a new window
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Covers 1950-. A comprehensive index from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, covering journal articles in all areas of the life sciences, with particular emphasis on biomedicine. Includes all areas of human and veterinary medicine, dentistry, nutrition, toxicology, pathology, public health, and health services administration. MEDLINE is a part of the National Library of Medicine's PubMed information suite.

National Quality Measures Clearinghouse
From the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services-- look for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The Guide to Community Preventive Services (from the Centers for Disease Control).
"The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a free resource to help you choose programs and policies to improve health and prevent disease in your community. Systematic reviews are used to answer these questions:
•Which program and policy interventions have been proven effective? •Are there effective interventions that are right for my community? •What might effective interventions cost; what is the likely return on investment?"
Physiotherapy Evidence Database, PEDro
TRIP database: clinical search engine
"The TRIP Database is a clinical search tool designed to allow health professionals to rapidly identify the highest quality clinical evidence for clinical practice." Usually you'll find summaries rather than full reports, but this varies.
They have a "Pro" version that costs $, but some material is still freely available.
Epistemonikos
"The main aim of Epistemonikos is to gather scientific information (i.e. evidence) that might be relevant for health decision-making, and to provide rapid and reliable access to the best available evidence for real-life questions.
Epistemonikos is aimed to health professionals, researchers and health decision-makers. It is not intended for the general public, even though it has been used by well-informed lay people and journalists successfully."

contents of PubMed, by PubMed

MEDLINE

MEDLINE is the largest component of PubMed and consists primarily of citations from journals selected for MEDLINE; articles indexed with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and curated with funding, genetic, chemical and other metadata.

PubMed Central (PMC)

Citations for PubMed Central (PMC) articles make up the second largest component of PubMed.

PMC is a full text archive that includes articles from journals reviewed and selected by NLM for archiving (current and historical), as well as individual articles collected for archiving in compliance with funder policies.

Bookshelf

The final component of PubMed is citations for books and some individual chapters available on Bookshelf.

Bookshelf is a full text archive of books, reports, databases, and other documents related to biomedical, health, and life sciences.