Searching for Medical Articles with PubMed

NOTE: With the closing of the Library, interlibrary loan is unavailable.

The gold standard database of medical journal abstracts is PubMed/Medline, a service of the US National Library of Medicine, which indexes 5300+ biomedical journals.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Is there a fee for using PubMed?

You can get to PubMed from any computer at any location free of charge, because it is a public database.

Is there a username and password?
Just go to http://pubmed.gov/. That's it, no username or password required.

Are there actual full text articles in PubMed?
Yes, there are some free full text articles available. Some are provided by the journal publishers, and others are from PubMed Central(PMC), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Here is a list of the PMC Journals.

How do I find the free full text articles?

After entering your topic, a link on the right hand side of the screen will alert you to the number of free full text articles. Screen shots of PubMed.

Why can't I get to the article I want?

If there is a link to full text, but you get the dreaded "you are attempting to access restricted content" message, or a screen asking for a username and password or the link is no longer valid, and you still want the article, you will need to provide a credit card number for "pay per view" to the publisher.

Can I search just nursing journal articles?

Go to Advanced Search, and scroll down to Limit by Topics, Languages and Journal Groups, and under subsets choose "Nursing Journals."

PubMed doesn't look the same. What happened?

PubMed was redesigned with a new interface in November 2009.

Where do I find more information?

PubMed Redesign from NLM Technical Bulletin

PubMed Ten Tips from UNC-Chapel Hill

PubMed Tutorial from NLM

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PubMed Redesign: Where has it gone?

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