👆👆 Be sure to click through the tabs at the top of this box!! 👆👆
PubMed is a database for finding scholarly articles about medicine. To use PubMed:
You may get way too many results if you use very broad search terms, like the name of a disease. Narrow your search by adding more search terms: For example, searching mononucleosis gives over 9000 results. Searching mononucleosis vaccine yields 300 results.
Use the filters on the left of the results. You may want to limit your search to just the last 5 or 10 years, as medicine can change very quickly. If you have too few results, broaden your date filter.
For an overview of current research on a particular topic, choose review, systematic review, and/or meta-analysis.
To find trials (experiments) related to your topic, select Clinical Trial and Randomized Controlled Trial
Tips for using PubMed effectively are found in the NLM PubMed tutorial.
Look at the citations (also called references) in the materials you read to find potential article sources. If these are not clickable links (or if the links don't work) look up the citation on the library website.
In PubMed or other databases, look for links to "free text", "PDF download", or the brown W Article Linker button to access the full text of an article.
If these links don't work, or if you do not find links, look up the article in Library Search. For articles with common names, include one of the authors names in your search terms. When you find the right article, click the links in the "online" section of the page, under the yellow bar.
If you can't find the article in Library Search, it's still possible to get the full text. You will need to use Interlibrary Loan (ILL). See how to use ILL on our Borrow and Request page, or contact me and I'll walk you through it.