Tips & Tricks

Keep the aim of your literature research in the back of your head when searching. When you search with broad terms, you will find a lot of articles, including many irrelevant ones. Are you searching with very specific terms, you will find less articles, but you may miss important literature. Find the middle ground by experimenting and adding synonyms. 

You can find a specific article efficiently by searching:

• the PubMed ID (PMID) of the article, for instance: 24660332
• the title of the article
• the author's name(s) + publication year
• the author's name(s) + first page number

You can easily find the publications from a specific author by searching for their last name, followed by their initials (max 2), for instance:

• Watanabe G
• Rovers MM

When working on an extensive search, you may want to keep track of the search strategy in a logbook. You can save your work with a My NCBI account (See tab: References) or by documenting the search strategy in a Word document.
Keeping a logbook is also a good idea, if you want to use your search string to other databases, such as CINAHL or Cochrane.

When retrieving too many results, there are several options to limit the number of results:

• Restrict to recent articles by using filters
• Limit to study type, e.g. with Clinical Queries
• Use more specific search terms:
  • MeSH
    • Search for articles that feature the MeSH term as a Major Topic with [Majr] instead of [MeSH]
    • Restrict the MeSH term with one or more relevant subheading(s)
  • Searches by word or phrase
    • Search for title words with [ti] instead of [tiab]
    • Replace search terms with more specific terms

Similarly when retrieving too few results, there are several options to broaden your search:

• Check relevant articles for words (in the title and abstract) and assigned MeSH terms, and add those to your search strategy
  • Relevant MeSH terms can also be found by searching for a title word AND medline[sb] (AND medline[sb] limits your search to records that have been assigned MeSH)
• Supplement your MeSH terms with
  • a broader MeSH, usually one level higher (using no explode)
    Example: raw foods[MeSH] OR food[MeSH:noexp] instead of raw foods[MeSH]. The MeSH Raw Foods has only been in use since 2015. Articles dating back to before 2015 are indexed using the broader term 'Food'.
  • a MeSH counterpart; many MeSH terms have a positive/negative counterpart
    Example: cervical rib syndrome[MeSH] and cervical rib[MeSH];
    mycobacterium tuberculosis[MeSH] and tuberculosis[MeSH]
• Broaden the search by leaving out a search concept that is too specific
• Search additionally in other (biomedical) databases, for instance CINAHL

When you are not sure whether a MeSH term actually exists for your topic:

PubMed is not always smart enough to automatically match the right MeSH term.

Import references from PubMed New into RefWorks

Method: Save and import.

1. Tick ​​the desired titles

2. Click on Save

3. Select Format: PubMed and click on Create File.


 

5. The file is downloaded. 

6. Open RefWorks and if you have multiple projects, make sure you are in the right project.

7. In RefWorks click on the 'Add a reference' or + icon and choose Import references.

8. Import from a file

9. Select the saved file in your file list and click Open. RefWorks recognizes which type of file you want to import.

10. Click on Import​

11. If applicable, select the correct folder. And click Import.

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