Search using words

In PubMed you can search the bibliographic information (author, title, year, journal, etc.) of articles by searching for a specific word or phrase. By entering a search term followed by a search field tag, PubMed searches for that particular term in that designated field of information.

​PubMed only contains abstracts of articles, not full texts, so searching the entire article for words is not possible.

Similar to MeSH, the title and abstract fields provide information on the content of an article.

When you search for words that appear in the title or abstract, it is important that you include the different descriptions of the term in your searches. Think of synonyms, singular and plural forms, British and American spelling, etc

Two tips:

1) If the topic has a MeSH term, check the entry terms (See tab: MeSH) for relevant synonyms to add to your [tiab] search.
2) Or do a simple subject search and check the Search Details (See tab: Introduction) for synonyms that PubMed may have included in the search.

Phrase
When looking for a particular phrase in PubMed (words in an exact order) use double quotation marks ("..."). Using quotation marks disables PubMed’s automatic term mapping function.
PubMed will also interpret search terms as a phrase when using a search field tag.

Compare the number of hits and search details (to view click the links below) of these searches:

• gene therapy - 370,000 hits
• "gene therapy" - 58,000 hits
• gene therapy[ti] - 15,000 hits
• gene[ti] AND therapy[ti] - 18,000 hits

Truncation
An asterisk (*) can be used to search for word variations in PubMed. PubMed will search for words that start with the root word complemented with 0 to an infinite number of characters. Searching with microscop* will also search for: microscope, microscopes, microscopy, etc.

Pay attention though: Truncation may cause unnecessary ‘noise’, for instance when undesirable word variations are included in the search.
Example: If you use diet* to find word variations such as diets and dieting, be aware that you will also search for diethyl ether (an anesthetic) and all other drugs that start with diethyl.. To make the search more specific try to lengthen the root word or type out relevant word variations.