 Pubmed Particulars
Overlooked, Underused, and (sometimes) Misunderstood: Some PubMed Features (1) HELP
Accessible from the blue sidebar on PubMed, the Help and FAQ sections are actually useful, unlike some other similar features you may have seen on other databases. In these, you'll find:
 A listing of all available search field qualifiers (aka "search tags") - these are terms enclosed in square brackets that direct PubMed to search a particular field:
- To find all citations from the journal Blood, for example, use
- Blood[journal]
- Blood [ta]
- To find the words "rooster attacks" in the title of an article, use
- Rooster[title] AND attacks[title]
- Rooster[ti] AND attacks[ti]
- To find all the articles containing "yogi" as a text word, use
- To find articles that show the corporate author name as CDC, use
A listing of all the titles contained in the "Core clinical journals" subset in PubMed
How to save a search strategy using the URL button that appears on the Details screen
How to limit your searches to a subset of consumer health journals (a subset not available from the Limits screen in PubMed)
Lots and lots of other useful information. Check it out.
(2) CUBBY
Cubby is PubMed's way of offering searchers a chance to save search strategies. Clipboard saves search results (citations), but Cubby saves the search strategies for future use. Many PubMed searchers are aware that Cubby is useful for current awareness searching on a particular subject of interest to them. Many are not aware that Cubby can be useful in other ways, too. Here are some examples:
Locally held titles and/or free full text (not LinkOut for Libraries)
- If a library has not activated LinkOut for Libraries, PubMed users can create a search for locally held titles, save that search in the Cubby, and have it available every time they do a search.
- Look up locally owned titles in the Journals Database
- Select a title and then use the "Send to Search Box with OR" option to add each title to the search strategy.
- When all titles have been selected, click on "Search PubMed"
- Open Cubby and save the search naming it something like "Local Journals".
- Now, whenever you want to limit your search to locally held titles, open your Cubby and
run the
- "Local Journals" search. It will show up in History and then can be combined with any subject search.
- Free full text, including PubMed Central, can be added to that same Cubby search to provide users with quick access to online free full text.
- After selecting journal titles but before running the PubMed search, add "OR free full -Or, run "free full text[sb]" as a stand-alone search and save it to the Cubby
Locally linked holdings (LinkOut for Libraries)
- For libraries that have activated LinkOut for Libraries, users can save a search in Cubby that will limit results only to those titles linked by their library:
- Search "loprovlibrary [filter]" where library is replaced with the library's LinkOut code.
- For example, the LinkOut library code for U Mass Med is umasslib, so the correct search form would be: loprovumasslib[filter] to limit to holdings linked by the U Mass Med library.
Preferences in Cubby
- Searchers who have privileges with more than one library can set their Cubby account to show the LinkOut icons of all the libraries they use.
- Once in Cubby, select "My LinkOut Preferences" from the blue sidebar and show or hide icons as desired.
- Store an email address in Cubby.
- It's wonderful to be able to email citations from PubMed, but it's also a good idea to email them to yourself first - after all, most people wouldn't recognize "Sent by Entrez" as someone they receive emails from, now would they? The solution? Email citations to yourself first. If an email address is stored in Cubby, then you don't have to type it into PubMed again. It will just pop up as the default email address whenever you're logged into your Cubby.
- Select User Preferences from the blue side bar in the Cubby to store an email address.
(3) QUOTATION MARKS AND SEARCHING IN PUBMED
"Quoted Phrase Not Found. See Details."
- Have you ever searched for a term in quotation marks in PubMed and received a message saying "Quoted phrase not found. See Details"? For example, if you search for "Jerusalem syndrome", you'll see:
- Does this mean the phrase does not appear in any citation in PubMed? No, it simply means that PubMed doesn't know how to "read" this phrase and it tries to map it as:
- To see that "Jerusalem syndrome" actually does appear in PubMed, search:
Jerusalem[ti] AND syndrome[ti]
- PubMed can only "read" phrases that are in its Phrase Table. Other phrases will be noted as "not found" and subjected to Automatic Term Mapping.
- To see if a phrase appears in PubMed's Phrase Table - meaning PubMed will be able to "read" it, use the Preview/Index function. Select "Text Word" or "Title/Abstract" as the field
- Enter the phrase you're looking for and click on "Index."
- If the phrase appears, PubMed can "read" that phrase and will search for it as a phrase.
That's enough for this issue. If you have questions about PubMed, please feel free to contact me.
Donna Berryman, Outreach Coordinator
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