Strategies for Searching the Literature Using PubMed
PubMed Home Page

Understanding how PubMed is structured begins with its Home Page (Figure 1). Three important areas that are most often used include:

1. A Search Box where terms are entered for conducting a traditional or comprehensive PubMed search.
2. Links to using the MeSH Database, Clinical Queries, and tutorials providing directions to using each of the features.
3. A link to the Advanced Search feature (below the Search Box).

PubMed is a free web based retrieval system developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine. It is part of the larger NCBI system known as Entrez. PubMed includes over 27 million citations from MEDLINE, which comprises the largest part of PubMed. MEDLINE contains references to approximately 5,600 journals published worldwide. PubMed includes links to full text articles through PubMed Central and to publisher web sites that offer full-text articles, however, there may be a fee to access the full text.⁷