Pubmed Particulars

Journals Database: Did you know...?

Many people are aware that it is now possible to search for journals by subject. The Journals Database homepage gives a link to the available subject terms. And many people are also aware that the Limits function in Journals allows retrieval to be limited only to those journals that are currently indexed in MEDLINE. Both those features are great.

But, suppose I want to do a search for all the journals currently indexed in MEDLINE on a specific subject and then I want to turn those results into a PubMed search? How do I do that easily?

As an example, suppose I want to find all the journals currently indexed in MEDLINE about jurisprudence and I want to make a search out of those journal titles so that I can save it and call it up whenever needed (to AND with some subject search in PubMed).

First, set up the search and apply the appropriate limit. For this, you have two options:

1. Pick the term "Jurisprudence" from the list of Journal Subject Terms (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/journals/subjects.html) - that will automatically run that search in the Journals Database - and then click Limits and choose "Currently indexed in MEDLINE"
2. Type this into the search box in the Journals Database: jurisprudence[st] AND currentlyindexed

Now, OR together all these journal titles as a PubMed search.

Many people's first inclination will be to use the "Send to search box with OR" option from the Send to drop down menu. That's not the best choice here because that will require that you process one title at a time. There's no "select all" option available. And, in the case of this example, you'd be doing that 73 times! There's got to be a better way.

There is.

Once you have executed the search and retrieved the titles, look at the Display options in the Journals Database for the PubMed Links option:

Choosing this display option will automatically transfer all the titles in your result set to a PubMed search.

Once you've got that done, all that remains is to save the search in a My NCBI account and you can call it up whenever you need it. Easy! Once you know how to do it, it's a snap!

Tutorials Link - Take a look at it now!

In case you haven't done so lately, take a look at the Tutorials link from the blue side bar on the PubMed page. That used to link to a single PubMed tutorial. Now, it's that and more. NLM has put together some "Quick Tours" that teach specific skills for searching PubMed and for using the Entrez MeSH Database. In addition, there are a nice set of Quick Tours for using My NCBI - including a couple that you might want to take a peek at:

• Instructions for using My NCBI to create email alerts for new articles about the adverse effects of a drug or a class of drugs http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/viewlet/myncbi/adveff.html
• Instructions on how to use My NCBI to create email alerts for new articles from a set of favorite journals http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/viewlet/myncbi/jourup.html

  The Tutorials page also provides a link to the video, "Branching Out: The MeSH Vocabulary" which is used in the day-long PubMed class taught by the National Training Center and Clearinghouse.

  And don't miss the link to "The Basics of MeSH." This is a website that provides a more in-depth look at MeSH and indexing covering such topics as:

  • The basics: What is MeSH & the tree structure organization of the vocabulary
  • Principles of subject indexing:
    The indexing process
    Major Topics
    Coordination

    The MeSH Database

    Searching PubMed using MeSH

    Indexing for chemicals and drugs

    Pharmacological Action Terms

    Searching for chemical and drugs

  It's a good tool for those who want to learn more about MeSH and a good review for those who have been using MeSH for awhile. Take a look. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/mesh/index.html

  Donna Berryman, Outreach Coordinator

  Donna.Berryman@umassmed.edu