PubMed is the largest biomedical database and is updated daily. It houses over 23 million citations from the United States and over 80 countries, spanning 1946-present. When doing any research that deals with medical and/or health topics this is a great place to start. You will also find information related to sociology, psychology, and more cross-disciplinary subjects in the database.
Setting up a MyNCBI account allows you to:
MeSH is the U.S. National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary that are used to index articles. MeSH offers a uniform and consistent way for the literature to be organized as being about a specific subject and therefore allows you to search with precision.
Using the MeSH browser feature of PubMed helps you to translate your term into the vocabulary of the database before you even begin your search. For example, the entry term: "aids" gets translated to Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome [MeSH]
To learn more about MeSH go to the Fact Sheet at NIH and/or watch this video:
MeSH terms can be found within a PubMed record, towards the bottom of the page. This is a great way to find other synonyms to use or a MeSH term to revise your search with.
Librarian Tip: It takes time to apply MeSH terms to articles, so keep in mind when you run a search for a MeSH term the very latest articles might not appear in the results. Need an article from this month? Try searching the MeSH term but as a keyword.
Keep track of the research you have done, including filters applied, by saving your search. Watch the screen cast below for details.
Filters can be used to narrow down your search to the specific dates, article type, or population that you are researching. Find filters next to your search results in PubMed.
Click on Customize to see more options for that filter.
Click Show additional filters to see other options, like age and sex.
