Last Updated: December 1998

Reporting Errors or Omissions

• My name is misspelled on a citation in MEDLINE. Can this be corrected?
• I found a misspelling/typo in the citation. Can this be corrected?
• I cannot find a citation for my article in MEDLINE?
• An entire journal issue is missing. Can this be added?

• I found a citation in PubMed. How do I get the full article?

• How do I find articles about a disease or condition?
• Can I search by the author of an article?
• I am looking for a specific article. I have the journal name, title, and author's name. Is there a quick way to retrieve a single citation?
• Can I specify a single date or date range as part of my search?
• Can I use a "wildcard" (*) when searching in PubMed?
• Can I do adjacency searching?

• How do I get PubMed to display all of my results on a single page?
• How do I print/save in PubMed?
• Can I import to a bibliographic manager program?
• Can you save your search strategies in PubMed?

• Where can I get a list of the journals indexed for MEDLINE?
• I can't find this journal in PubMed. Why?

• In what order are the citations displayed in PubMed?
• In what order are citations from the Related Articles link displayed?

My name is misspelled on a citation in MEDLINE. Can this be corrected?

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) takes the author's name as it appears in the article at the time of publication, and only uses the last name plus the first two initials for MEDLINE (e.g., Fauci AS). Corrections for the misspelling of author names are handled as follows:

NLM's Typographical Error:

If the author's name is cited correctly in the journal and the error is NLM's typographical mistake, please report the finding to the NLM Help Desk with the following information (or as much as possible):

Citations that carry the tag, [MEDLINE record in process] or [Record as supplied by publisher] have not yet gone through NLM's quality control procedures and indexing process. It is during this process that errors are identified and corrected. On the average, it takes approximately 4-6 weeks for a citation to go through the indexing process and become a full MEDLINE record. It is not necessary to notify NLM of an error at this stage. However, if the error is still present after the full MEDLINE record is available, please report it to the NLM Help Desk.

1. The journal name, volume, issue, and page number.
2. The title of the article, or the MEDLINE UI number (e.g., UI: 12345678), or the PMID number (e.g., PMID: 1234567).
3. The correct name using the format, lastname initials (e.g., Jones JA).

Notes:

1. Citations with dates of publication prior to 1993 are corrected several times during the year, so correction to older records may not be noticed for several months.
2. NLM leases its data to vendors around the world. Other products and services containing MEDLINE data will not necessarily reflect corrections made to records at NLM right away. If you search MEDLINE through a vendor's system, please contact the vendors about their maintenance schedules.

If the author's name was printed incorrectly at the time of publication, then the journal in which the article appeared must publish an erratum before NLM will make the correction in MEDLINE. If this is the case, please contact the journal's publisher.

It is NLM's policy that errata will be acknowledged only if they are printed in a citable form; that is, an erratum notice must appear on a numbered page in the journal that originally published the article. Error notices that are inserted unbound into a journal issue or "tipped in" will not be considered part of the permanent bibliographic record. NLM does not make changes in the database in response to letters from authors or editors, unless such letters indicate that a substantive published erratum is forthcoming.

For additional information on how NLM handles errors in MEDLINE, please review the NLM Errata, Retraction, Duplicate Publication, and Comment Policy fact sheet.
 

I found a misspelling/typo in the citation. Can this be corrected?

Error in a MEDLINE Citation:

If you find an error in a MEDLINE citation please report this to the NLM Help Desk and include the information below (or as much as possible).

Citations that carry the tag, [MEDLINE record in process] or [Record as supplied by publisher] have not yet gone through NLM's quality control procedures and indexing process. It is during this process that errors are identified and corrected. On the average, it takes approximately 4-6 weeks for a citation to go through the indexing process and become a full MEDLINE record. It is not necessary to notify NLM of an error at this stage. However, if the error is still present after the full MEDLINE record is available, please report it to the NLM Help Desk.

1. The journal name, volume, issue, and page number.
2. The title the of article, or the MEDLINE UI number (e.g., UI: 12345678), or the PMID number (e.g., PMID: 1234567).
3. A description of the error.

Notes:

1. Citations with dates of publication prior to 1993 are corrected only several times during the year, so correction to older records may not be noticed for a while.
2. NLM leases its data to vendors around the world. Other products and services containing MEDLINE data will not necessarily reflect corrections made to records at NLM right away. If you search MEDLINE through a vendor's system, please contact the vendors about their maintenance schedules. 

Why is my article missing from MEDLINE?

An entire journal issue is missing. Can this be added?

If you cannot find citations for a journal, a particular journal issue, or are unable to locate a citation for a specific article, please report this to the NLM Help Desk and include the information below (or as much as possible):

1. The full journal name, volume, and issue number.
2. If you are looking for a specific article, include the title of the article and/or the author's name.

Journal is Not Indexed for MEDLINE

The decision whether or not to index a journal for MEDLINE is an important one and is made by the Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), based on considerations of both scientific policy and scientific quality. The Board of Regents of the Library sets policy for the Library. The Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC) has been established to review journal titles and assess the quality of their contents.

Currently, there are approximately 3,900 journals indexed and included in MEDLINE. During the review process by the LSTRC, new journals are selected for inclusion and some journals may be dropped. For additional information about the journal section process, please refer to NLM's Journal Selection for Index Medicus/MEDLINE ®.

Non-Receipt of Issue

The most common reason for a missing journal, is non-receipt of an issue. If the NLM does not yet own the issue in question due to a distribution or mail problem, a claim must be made by our Serials Records staff. Some journals are harder to claim than others, and some issues may be out of print and require other actions to obtain copies, therefore, it is not possible to estimate when the issue will be received by NLM.

A Journal is Selectively Indexed

Some of the journals indexed for MEDLINE are selectively indexed only for articles that fall within the scope of MEDLINE (Biomedicine, Biomedical Science). There than 9 million references to articles published in 3,900 biomedical journals. From PubMed, to retrieve citations to articles discussing a specific disease or condition follow the steps below.

A Quick PubMed Search:

1. Enter your search term(s) in the PubMed query box (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis) and click on the Search button.
2. PubMed will display an initial batch of citations. From this page, the Document Summary Page, you can browse the results to determine which citations you may want to display in abstract format, or to retrieve a copy of the full-text of the article. In addition, if you find one citation that is "on-target," use the Related Articles link to retrieve additional articles that are closely related to the "on-target" article.

See topics:

* Basic Mode

*Subject Searching

Additional Resources:

In addition to accessing PubMed for citations to journal articles, the following consumer health information resources are also very helpful:

• NLM's MEDLINEplus is an easy-to-understand resource for the public which includes MEDLINE as well as links to self-help groups, access to National Institute of Health consumer-related organizations, clearinghouses, health-related organizations, and clinical trials.

• The healthfinder web site can lead you to selected online publications, clearinghouses, databases, web sites, and support and self-help groups, as well as the government agencies and not-for-profit organizations that produce reliable information for the public.

• The Health Information page presents an introduction to some of the many health information resources provided by the National Institutes of Health.

• The National Health Information Center is specifically designed to provide the public with information on medical conditions. In addition to visiting their web site, you can also contact them via email: nhicinfo@health.org or phone: 1-800-336-4797.

• The National Women's Health Information Center web site links you to current health information resources for the consumer, the researcher, and the health care professional. It has excellent general resources, including the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy.

• The National Cancer Institute conducts and supports research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs with respect to the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer, rehabilitation from cancer, and the continuing care of cancer patients and the families of cancer patients.

• The NLM HIV/AIDS Resources web site links you to online databases, conference information, publications, outreach activities, treatment information, clinical trials information and related Internet resources outside NLM.

• Your local public, medical, or university library to learn about health services that may be available in your local area. If you would like to have someone do a search for you (for a fee), and you are in the United States, please contact your Regional Medical Library at 800-338-7657. They will refer you to a local medical library that may be willing to perform a search for you.

Searching by a particular author is easy. Enter the author's name in the format of last name plus initials (e.g., waldman bj). PubMed automatically truncates on the author's name to account for varying middle initials and designations such as Jr. or 2nd. In addition, you can also combine a subject terms or a journal title with the author's name (e.g., waldman bj arthroplasty).

Notes:

1. To turn off the automatic truncation so that you retrieve based only on the single first initial, use double quotes around the surname and first initial qualified with the author search field tag [au], e.g., "waldman b" [au] .
2. If you enter just the author's last name, i.e., no initial, PubMed will search that name in All Fields not just the Author field. In addition to retrieving citations to article with the author's last name, you may also retrieve citations to article discussing an author by that last name.

See topics:

* Author Names

I am looking for a specific article. I have the journal name, title, and author's name. Is there a quick way to retrieve just this citation?

PubMed's Citation Matcher is a fill-in-the-blank form that allows you to enter journal citation information to locate a record for a specific single article, or items indexed from a particular volume or issue of a journal. The Citation Matcher is available from PubMed's home page sidebar.

The Citation Matcher allows you to enter any or all of the following bibliographic elements: journal title, date, volume, issue, page, or author. On the Citation Matcher page, enter the bibliographic data you have (as instructed on the screen), and click on Search. If there are any citations that match, PubMed will display your search results.

Can I specify a single date or specific date range as part of my search?

Yes, you can specify a single date or date range as part of your search strategy. PubMed contains two date fields:

• Date of Publication, [dp] -- The date that the article was published. Note: Use this date field to retrieve articles published on a specific date or within a certain time period.

• Entrez Date, [edat] - Contains the date that a record was initially added to PubMed. Note: Use this date field to retrieve citations that have been added since a previous search.

1. Dates must be entered using the format yyyy/mm/dd [date field]. The month and day are optional.
2. To enter a date range, use the colon (:) between two dates, e.g., yyyy/mm/dd:yyyy/mm/dd [date field]. The month and day are optional.
3. You must combine the date or date range using the Boolean operator, AND (must be in uppercase) to your search strategy, e.g., yyyy/mm [date field] AND term.

• Retrieve citations to articles discussing cardiac surgery in children that have been added to PubMed from Oct 5, 1998 to Dec 4, 1998:

• Retrieve citations to articles published in the June 1998 issue of the Journal of Vascular Surgery:

• Retrieve citations added to PubMed from Oct 5, 1998 to Dec 4, 1998:

• Retrieve citations to articles that were published on Mar 15, 1998:

See topics:

* Entrez Date limit

* Advanced Search Features - Boolean Operators & Search Field Qualification

* Search and Syntax Rules

*  Search Field Qualification

*  Dates & Date Ranging

*  Search Field Descriptions and Tags

Can I use a "wildcard" (*) when searching in PubMed?

You can use the asterisk (*) to find all words that begin with a given text string. Place an asterisk at the end of a term to search for all terms that begin with that word; for example bacter* will find all terms that begin with the root bacter; e.g., bacteria, bacterium, bacteriophage.

PubMed uses only the first 150 variations of a truncated term. If a truncated term, e.g., staph*, produces more than 150 variations, PubMed displays the warning message shown below on the Document Summary Page (or Current Query in Advanced Search Mode).

Notes:

1. Phrases that include a space in a word after the asterisk will NOT be included; for instance, infection* includes "infections," but not "infection control."
2. Truncation turns off automatic term mapping and, also the automatic explosion of a MeSH term for more specific terms indented under it. For example, heart attack* will not map to the MeSH term, Myocardial Infarction or include any of the more specific indentions, e.g., Myocardial Stunning; Shock, Cardiogenic.

PubMed does not actually perform adjacency searching but uses a Phrase List (a list of recognized phrases) against which search terms are matched. PubMed may fail to find your specific phrase because it is not in the Phrase List.

However, you can enclose your phrase in quotes (e.g., "single cell") to force PubMed to check a second list, the Compound Word Dictionary for your phrase. This dictionary contains several million phrases generated from the citation titles and abstracts, the UMLS and the MeSH vocabulary.

Important Note: Your phrase may actually appear in the citation and abstract data, but may not appear in either the Phrase List or the Compound Word Dictionary. If this is the case, then the individual terms are combined (ANDed) together and searched in All Fields. You can see how PubMed has translated your search terms by clicking on the Details button from the Document Summary Page (results screen), see examples below.

Example without double quotes:

If you enter: single cell

PubMed will search these terms as: single[All Fields] AND("Cells"[MeSH Terms] OR cell[Text Word])

Example with double quotes:

If you enter: "single cell"

PubMed will search these terms as: "single cell"[All Fields]

For more detailed description on the above topic please refer to PubMed's online Help -- available from the PubMed home page sidebar or from the question mark (?) link on the title bar at the top of a display page.

See topic(s):

* Automatic Term Mapping

* Phrase Searching

* Details Button

How do I get PubMed to display all of my results on a single page?

On the Document Summary Page (results screen), PubMed displays your citations in batches - the default is 20 citations per page. You can print, save, or order citations only one page at a time.

The Docs Per Page pull-down menu allows you to increase the number of citations displayed on a single page. Before you consider printing, saving, or ordering the full-text of documents, it is recommended that you increase the number of documents displayed per page to accommodate your entire retrieval. To do this:

1. From the Document Summary Page (results screen), click on the Docs Per Page pull-down menu to select a higher number. Note: To have all of the citations displayed on a single page, select a number higher than the total number of your search results.
2. Next, click Search. PubMed will redisplay your citations according to your selection.

See topics:

* Number of documents to display per page

* Document Summary Page (Search Results)

* Displaying Documents

* Printing and Saving
 

How do I print/save in PubMed?

To save or print citations in PubMed, please follow the instructions below. To import into a bibliographic manager program, refer to Save/Print in a Detailed Format below.

Detailed instructions are also available from PubMed's online Help -- available from the PubMed home page sidebar or from the question mark (?) link on the title bar at the top of a display page.

Saving and Printing Instructions:

Resetting the Number of Documents Per Page:

Before printing or saving, consider increasing the number of documents per page so that the total number of documents is displayed on one page. You can only print or save the citations from the displayed page.

To do this, click on the Docs Per Page pull-down menu, select a higher number, and click Search. PubMed will redisplay the citations according to your selection. Note: To have all of the citations displayed on a single page, just select a number higher than the total number of results.

Save/Print Brief Format:

To save or print the citations in the brief format as displayed on the Document Summary Page, use the Save or Print functions from your Web browser.

Save/Print in a Detailed Format:

Below are the instructions for printing or saving citations in a more detailed format (e.g., citation, abstract, or MEDLINE formats). Please refer to the Display Formats section under PubMed's online Help.

For Selected Citations:

1. Select the documents you wish to view by clicking on the check box - an "x" or check mark will appear in the box. Note: You can only mark selections to save or print a page at a time, see reference to Docs Per Page above.
2. Next, use the Display pull-down menu to select the desired format (Abstract, Citations, or MEDLINE) and click on Display. Note: Select "MEDLINE report" for importing into a bibliographic manager program.
3. From the display page, go to the bottom of the screen. Make the appropriate selections from the Save pull-down menus and click on Save. Note: For "MEDLINE report," select Text.
4. At this point, you may be prompted with specific instructions from your Web browser, such as naming the file and directory and also selecting the file type.

1. Use the Display pull-down menu to select the desired format (Abstract, Citations, or MEDLINE) and click on Display. Note: Select "MEDLINE report" for importing into a bibliographic manager program.
2. Next, without clicking on any of the check-boxes, click Display. Note: You can only save or print a page at a time, see reference to Docs Per Page above.
3. From the display page, go to the bottom of the screen. Make the appropriate selections from the Save pull-down menus and click on Save. Note: For "MEDLINE report," select Text.
4. At this point, you may be prompted with specific instructions from your Web browser, such as naming the file and directory and also selecting the file type.

To save a search strategy in PubMed, follow the steps below:

1. First, you must construct your search strategy from the Basic Mode (PubMed's home page) or from the Boolean Search mode, and click on Search.
2. While on the Document Summary page (initial display of citations), use your web browser's function to save the URL or address location (e.g., bookmarks, favorite places). Note: Aside from seeing other codes in the URL, you should also see some of your search terms.
3. When you save the URL it will be saved as "PubMed medline query". Use your web browser's edit function to change the title to reflect the subject of your search strategy.

Where can I get a list of the journals indexed for MEDLINE?

Download the Entire List into a File:

The entire list of journals indexed for MEDLINE is available for download in four different formats (Uncompressed, GNU zip, UNIX Compress or PKZIP) from the Citation Matcher.

Search for a Few Specific Journal(s):

You can use PubMed's Journal Browser to search for specific journals. The Journal Browser (available from PubMed's home page sidebar) allows you to look up a journal by title or by the MEDLINE journal abbreviation and search for citations from that journal.

To do this, from the Journal Browser page, enter either the full journal title or MEDLINE abbreviation in the query box and click on Start. The Journal Browser will display a listing of possible matches each with the full journal title, ISSN number, and MEDLINE abbreviation. Click on the MEDLINE abbreviation to retrieve all of the citations for that journal that are available in PubMed.

In what order are the citations displayed in PubMed?

Citations in PubMed are displayed in Entrez Date order - last in, first out. The Entrez date is the date that a record was initially added to PubMed and should not be confused with the publication date which is the date an article was published.

You can use the Entrez Date pull-down menu to limit your retrieval to a pre-selected range of dates or use the Entrez Date search field qualifier to specify a single date or date range. The Entrez Date does not display as part of the record.
 

In what order are citations from the Related Articles link displayed?

The Related Articles link displays citations in rank order from the most to least relevant compared to the citation you linked from.