PubMed comprises more than 28 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature. It contains more than 36 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. Although it does not include full-text journal articles, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).
Citations in PubMed primarily stem from the biomedicine and health fields, and related disciplines such as life sciences, behavioural sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering.
Pubmed includes the information from the entire MEDLINE databases. For information on the differences between the two, see our blog post Pubmed v Medline.
Viewing your search results
Click on the article title for more information, including the abstract (summary) of the article, links to similar articles, and links to other, more recent articles that have cited this article in their bibliography.
The full text of articles can be accessed in a number of ways:
Saving the results of your search
From your results list you can tick the boxes for the articles you wish to keep a note of and then Email them to yourself.
See the video at the end of this guide for more on searching Pubmed, and also this link to the PubMed User Guide: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/help/
Try searching PubMed by following the steps outlined below. This will help you to familiarise yourself with some of the most common functions:
Pubmed does not provide specific accessibility features, though efforts are made to ensure the information on the site is accessible. Accessibility information for this resource can be found on the National Library of Medicine Accessibility page.
Your Learning and Research Librarian will be able to help you make the best use of online resources. For detailed guidance, book a tutorial via the Learning Skills Hub.
This short YouTube video shows you the basics of how to use PubMed.
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