Using the Advanced Search

The Advanced Search in PubMed makes it easier to conduct more elaborate searches. It can also help to speed up some aspects of searching.

The access the Advanced Search, click on Advanced underneath the search field.

The top of the Advanced Search page is the Advanced Search Builder. In this area you can enter search terms and click  the blue ADD button to the right to execute the search.

Use the drop down menu to the left to select a field to search. These are fields in the record such as Author, Article Title, Journal etc. This is the same as using field tags.

You can also control the Boolean operators from the Advanced Search. Click on the downward arrow on the right of the blue ADD button to display a drop down menu with the three Boolean options. Using this option, you have the ability to build concepts before executing the search.

Using the Search History

The Search History lists all the searches you have executed in a browsing session.

Each line is assigned a number. You can see the search term, the sorting method and the number of results found for that individual line.

Additionally, there are some commands that can be performed from the Search History section. These can be accessed on the individual search lines, under the "Actions" column.

The Actions are:

• Add query - Sends the search term(s) from this line up to the "Query" box in the Search Builder section.
  • If there are already terms in the Query box, you will see boolean operators (AND, OR & NOT) in this menu. Using this feature, you can combine lines from your search history together to make an effective search strategy.
• Delete - Deletes this line from your search history.
• Create alert - You can choose whether you would like to receive e-mail updates of your search to alert you when new references that fulfill your search criteria are added to PubMed. 

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are terms that PubMed uses to tag articles with. PubMed is a human-curated database, meaning that all articles in PubMed have been read by an indexer at the National Library of Medicine. These are the list of standard terms added by indexers to the article record to help improve search results. You can use MeSH terms in your search query to help retrieve more relevant results. It can be useful to browse MeSH directly so that you know if there are narrower terms that will be included with your selected term, or if there are applicable broader terms that will provide better coverage.

When searching MeSH, keep in mind:

• Each search result that you see is a different subject heading. These are not article records!
• Sometimes more than one subject heading will be relevant for your search. Review the results and open any that may be useful.

Example search for Fitness Trackers in MeSH:

• Start with a general search on your topic. In this case, I used the search term "device"

• Click on the most relevant result, in this case "Equipment and Supplies."
• Under Diagnostic Equipment, click on "Fitness Trackers."
• You then can see the MeSH Categories for Fitness Trackers and/or use this page to build a search in the PubMed Search Builder at the top.

• Results will be shown in the regular PubMed database.