Getting the most out of your search
![Picture](/uploads/1/4/7/1/14712998/7052524.png?560)
click on the photo to go to the training center
Video tutorials/PDF handouts are offered through PubMed's online training center. Take the mini quizzes to test your searching knowledge! You'll also find a YouTube link to the right of the search box on the Advanced Search page, showing you how to effectively use the advanced search function.
Table of Stopwords (words not indexed by PubMed and therefore not useful in a search:
Other things to note about PubMed's search viability:
2. spaces are translated into AND, the same as if you were using Google
- Because it is a free resource, PubMed will never log you out and keeps your search history for 8 hours (under "Recent Activity" in the right sidebar) unless you leave the site yourself. In fact, the database offers a few ways for you to save your searches, found here.
- Some Boolean logic is allowed as follows:
2. spaces are translated into AND, the same as if you were using Google
- Truncation is used with an asterisk(*) and will find up to 600 variations of a word; however, truncation does not find variants of MeSH terms (e.g. breast cancer* would not find the MeSH term breast neoplasm or variants) nor does it continue beyond a space.
- PubMed does not offer Any Order Proximity operators, but it does search MeSH terms counting spaces as Same Order Proximity, using AND in the spaces between different MeSH terms.
- If you are searching without using the MeSH Thesaurus (free text searching) automatic term mapping will occur anyway, unless you put quotation marks around a word or phrase (breast cancer will be mapped to the MeSH term breast neoplasm, but "breast cancer" will remain as it is typed).
- Command Mode searching is not readily available for expert searchers, but commands and field tags are supported in both Basic and Advanced search. Additionally, the results page shows the search in Command Mode in the lower right sidebar.