Using PubMed for research « Periodical World

Using PubMed for research

PubMed is the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s database for health, including psychology. It is sometimes referred to as Medline.

The simplest way to approach searching in PubMed is to use keywords or a phrase. If you are putting together several concepts that you want included, use the connector ‘and’ between your terms or phrases.

PubMed automatically “maps” your terms to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), which means you do not have to go and look up those specialized terms.

Here is an example of a search for dopamine and addiction; click the Details tab to see how your search looks “behind the scenes”:

(“dopamine”[MeSH Terms] OR dopamine[Text Word]) AND (“addictive behavior”[Text Word] OR “behavior, addictive”[MeSH Terms] OR addiction[Text Word])

This Simple Subject Search 2 minute tutorial helps explain.

Narrowing or limiting your search to find empirical studies

After entering your keyword search and retrieving a list of results, click on the Limit tab to refine your search.

Scroll down to the Type of Article check list; find empirical studies by checking the boxes to select Clinical Trial, Randomized Controlled Trial, or Meta Analysis – PubMed automatically puts OR between each type. You can also select a date range, choose Humans or Animals and limit to a specific language in this area.

Note: Research is NOT a Type of Article in PubMed. However you can type in this exact phrase – “Research”[Mesh] – and combine it with your other search terms.

For example, a search for “Research”[Mesh] and sleep disorder with limits set to Published in the last 5 years, humans, English and the research types of articles selected looks like this (click Details tab to see):

“Research”[Mesh] AND ((“sleep disorders”[TIAB] NOT Medline[SB]) OR “sleep disorders”[MeSH Terms] OR sleep disorder[Text Word]) AND (“2003/03/13″[PDat] : “2008/03/10″[PDat] AND “humans”[MeSH Terms] AND English[lang] AND (Clinical Trial[ptyp] OR Meta-Analysis[ptyp] OR Randomized Controlled Trial[ptyp]))

Printing of abstracts can be done with the browser print button or changing the Send To pulldown menu to Printer. You can also save multiple citations by using the Clipboard.

Getting to the full-text articles or determining if the library has the journal in print is done by clicking on the USF Find Full Text button at the right side of the abstract.