This page goes beyond what you already know about entering a word or phrase into a search box and wading through many results.
The section on PubMed Linking to Full Text of Articles Instructions describes further options to get full text PDFs of articles when you don't get a PDF link or button, and why this can become complicated.
PubMed is a free (tax-supported) service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 34 million citations. Covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, allied health sciences, veterinary medicine, and public health along with basic science relating to health from 1950-present. Uses the controlled vocabulary MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Includes links to subscribed full text through Quinnipiac and Open Access full text through PubMed Central and academic publishers’ websites.
The Quinnipiac Check for Full Text link looks like this:
The User Guide within PubMed is indeed helpful. In PubMed Help you can find definitions of terms used in the database, such as "systematic review," links to lists of the journals indexed in the database, and even the mathematical formulae for the Best Match relevance algorithm.
You will find the User Guide link under the Search button.
While the appearance of Pubmed results has changed, this explanation of the various kinds of full-text links in PubMed is still true.
Example Topic: Methycillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
Enter the search term, MRSA, into the search box in PubMed and click Search.
In the left margin, choose filters to make your results more specific.
Text availability: be cautious since quality articles could be eliminated from results
Species: Humans
Article types: there are many types and more than one can be chosen
Publication dates: 5 years
Select Additional Filters. This lets you filter by species, language, sex, journal, or age. Click off the filters you wish to use and select Show.
Languages: English and any other language in which you can read scientific articles
The search result below has no filters applied.
Review Results page
Too many results, too few,... modify search terms, filters
For example - MRSA infection control, filtered to 5 years, humans, and English
Still too many results, consider limiting by age: 19-44 years of age
Review previous searches
Select Advanced under the mail search box.
Scroll down to "History and Search Details" to see "Recent activity": a list of the searches conducted.
Select the right chevron > (which changes to point down when selected) for the way PubMed structured the search (keywords and MeSH-Medical Subject Headings).
Click on the article title of interest and read the abstract if available.
Review the Related citations in PubMed for other articles of interest.
Note the Q Check for Full Text link in the top right of screen; if none, try any link provided
If none of the links work, copy and paste the article title, in this case “Decolonization to Reduce Postdischarge Infection Risk among MRSA Carriers” into the Library OneSearch box on the Arnold Bernhard Library homepage.
If any article is not available it can be requested through interlibrary loan (ILL)
Scroll to MeSH Terms and review the medical terms (MeSH) assigned the article.
The MeSH subjects are linkable to a new PubMed search or to the MeSH database for definitions and related subjects.
