PubMed is a free and publicly available resource provided by the US National Library of Medicine. It covers the biomedical literature and, as the free version of MEDLINE, is highly authoritative.

Advantages of using PubMed:

• It is a huge, reliable, and highly authoritative resource
• It is specific to medicine and health
• In Basic Search, you can just enter your search terms, without operators or formatting. PubMed uses various tools to get the most relevant results.
• Yet you can use Advanced Search, or the MeSH Database (Medical Subject Headings), if you wish. The Search Builder and Search History enable you to build and carry out complex searches, including searches using MeSH Terms
• It is free and publicly available so will always be available to you after you graduate.

Disadvantages of using PubMed:

• Its interface can be a little daunting, and it is sometimes not clear how a search has worked
• It does not necessarily contain links to full-text, and you might have to use Primo Search to track down the full item.

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 

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.

Filters

In your results list, you can use the filters (limiters) on the left side of screen for 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. Where full-text does not appear to be available, go to the full PubMed record and use the  link to search for the full article via Primo Search.

If in doubt, copy the article title into Primo Search to see if it's held by CSU Library.

For more help with searching in PubMed, see PubMed Help at top right.

For information on using MeSH terms in PubMed, see the page in this guide on PubMed and MeSH.

For assistance with using PubMed, have a look at the PubMed User Guide, especially the sections on:

• Search PubMed
• Advanced Search.

You can also try the following interactive tutorials:

• PubMed: Find articles on a topic
• PubMed subject search: How it works

For more Help resources, go to PubMed Online Training.