Bio 4030: Biological Clocks (Herzog)

These slides will walk you through:

• Why PubMed is useful 
• How to get to PubMed
• How to efficiently search PubMed, including tips for thinking of keywords and advanced searching
• How to get articles on- or off-campus

Why should I use PubMed?

PubMed is a major subject-specific database for the medical and life sciences. Unlike more general databases, you're less likely to get irrelevant results or miss key publications when you search PubMed efficiently. It's a great place to start your searching before trying out other databases. 

Getting to PubMed

1. Go to library.washu.edu.

2. Change the search bar from "Quick Search" to "Database Finder" and search for PubMed. 

Getting to PubMed, cont.

3. Select the first link in the search results to open PubMed's Simple Search.

Searching PubMed

1. Enter your keywords into the search bar as if you're doing a Google search. As you type, PubMed will auto-fill potential search phrases. These can be helpful if you're struggling to think of keywords relating to your topic, or if you want to expand your search beyond the keywords you already have.

Tips for Thinking of Keywords

1. Identify the main concepts of your research question. If your research question is how do environmental factors affect human circadian timing? then your main concepts/keywords are environmental factors and human circadian timing.

2. Break down your concepts further for a more specific search. Environmental factors could be temperature or exposure to sunlight, while human circadian timing could also be called circadian rhythm or circadian cycle.

3. Once you find an initial article that interests you, click on its title to open it and look at the section labeled "Keywords." These can provide you with further ideas for terms to search by.

Advanced Searching

Depending on your topic, you may need to create a more advanced search to get relevant results. Try experimenting with the search operators below if your initial simple search gave you few relevant results:

• Use double quotes (" ") around a keyword or phrase to search that exact phrase. For example, searching "circadian cycle" will give you articles where that exact phrase appears, whereas searching without the quotes will also search for 'circadian' and 'cycle' separately, bringing in more irrelevant results. 
• Use OR in-between synonymous keywords to get more results. For example, (human circadian timing OR circadian rhythm OR circadian cycle) will give you articles that contain any of these keywords, which will help you find relevant articles you may have missed otherwise.
• Use AND in-between main concepts/synonymous sets of keywords to get more relevant results. For example, (human circadian timing OR circadian rhythm OR circadian cycle) AND (environmental factors OR sleep OR "exposure to sunlight") gives you articles that contain one of the human circadian timing keywords and one of the environmental factors keywords, whereas searching without the AND will give you any article that contains any of your keywords.

Refining your Search Results

1. Limit your search results by applying some of the filters on the left. A good practice is to always apply the "Abstract" and "Full Text" filters under "Text Availability" so you only get articles with the abstract and full text available.

2. You can limit by year using the "Results by Year" or "Publication Date" filter.

3. You can find more filters under "Additional Filters."

"Similar Articles" and "Cited By"

1. When you open an article, PubMed automatically recommends articles similar to it, as well as articles that have cited it. Taking a look at these could help you find other articles related to your topic.

Getting an Article On- and Off-Campus

1. Whether on- or off-campus, you can get the full-text of an article by clicking on the green "Get It!" button in the top-left corner under "Full-Text Links."

Getting an Article On- or Off-Campus, cont.

2. Select any of the links to open the full-text of the article in your browser. You will also have the option to save the article as a PDF.

Note: If you are off-campus or on a certain campus wifi, you will be asked to log in with your WUSTLKey before getting to the full-text. 

Getting an Article On- or Off-Campus, cont.

3. If when you select the green "Get It!" button, you are met with this page, you can select "Request this item" to request the article through interlibrary loan and be sent a PDF of it in 1-3 days. When prompted, log into interlibrary loan with your WUSTLKey. Interlibrary loan will automatically populate a request with the article information, so all you have to do is hit submit!