Search health databases

Learn how to use the major health databases to find the best available evidence for your research

PubMed is a database of peer-reviewed biomedical literature. By searching PubMed, you will be searching Medline, plus additional recent content. PubMed search is freely available online, however to connect to full text articles from the University of Adelaide Library, use the link above.

Use the interactive activity below for an introduction to using PubMed.

Advanced searching in PubMed

Use the interactive activity below to learn how to access research in PubMed from start to finish.

Search PubMed effectively

Search PubMed using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
MeSH terms are official words or phrases selected to represent medical concepts. Each article in PubMed is indexed with one or more MeSH terms which describe what the article is about. Think of them as tags, which make it easier for you to locate all of the articles on a specific concept.
Finding MeSH: other methods
Having trouble identifying MeSH terms? This guide provides some alternative methods.
Create a basic logic grid
1. Start with a basic logic grid of relevant keywords
Create a PubMed logic grid and run the search
2. Further develop your logic grid so that it will work effectively in PubMed, then run the search.
PubMed results screen
3. Now that you have run your search, learn more about using the results
Human studies only
A quick reference guide for how to safely eliminate animal studies from your search results.
PubMed: Save searches & set alerts
PubMed makes it easy to save your searches, create collections and set up email alerts.
Apply the English language filter in PubMed

PubMed videos (Legacy PubMed)

Using a Logic Grid: PubMed
This video shows you how to use a logic grid to make searching easier, and to avoid getting in a muddle. (9:33)
PubMed Field Codes: MeSH
This video introduces you to MeSH (the indexing language of PubMed) and shows you how it works. (6:15)
PubMed Field Codes: Titles, Abstracts and Text Words
This video introduces you to some additional fields to use in your PubMed searches. (6:44)

Other PubMed tools

Yale MeSH Analyser
Analyse Medical Subject Headings to design and refine your searches.
PubMed PubReMiner
A tool for PubMed query building and literature mining.

EndNote: exporting references from PubMed
Learn how to export references from PubMed using Firefox and Chrome.
PubMed and journal title abbreviations in EndNote
Learn how to import the Medical Terms List so that full journal titles display in your bibliography when using the Harvard referencing style.

Exporting PubMed results to Covidence
Using PubMed text files to export results