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Biological Sciences: 03-161 Molecules to Mind Research Guide: PubMed Tutorial

This guide provides links, tutorials and tips to finding and accessing scholarly research in biology and neuroscience.

Do a simple search in PubMed

PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's online service for searching the MEDLINE database and additional biomedical and life sciences literature.  It is one of the most up to date, comprehensive and powerful ways for finding scholarly literature in biomedicine. 

To start, go to PubMed and try doing a simple search as shown below:

 
Basic searching tip:
Don't use words like "in" or "of" or "the". Just use your key concepts and keep it simple!

 

Sort your results

When you first do a search, the results will automatically be sorted by Most Recent, so newest articles at the top. Change the sorting to Best Match. This will bring the most relevant articles to the top.

Use PubMed Search Filters to narrow your search

Use Filters in PubMed to narrow a search by particular attribute like article type or publication year.  Watch the following video to learn more (note that the video is 2 minutes in length and will automatically jump into another video after it finishes).