On first glance, PubMed’s sleek interface is rather calming with its single search box and re-grouped and bundled tools & resources.
On second glance, I’m really missing the familiar tabs across the top of the page (limits, preview/index, history, clipboard & details).
Where are my PubMed tabs?
So with the new interface, you’ll find the features that were formerly hidden behind the PubMed tabs, now laid out within the Advanced Search page. A link to it can be found at the top of the PubMed page. Other features can be found bundled in the ‘Display Settings’ and ‘Send to’ dropdown menus.
And what about the tabs set up in My NCBI to filter the search results? These filters, as before, are set up in the free My NCBI account associated with PubMed, providing space to save searches, build collections, create alerts that you will receive via email when new articles on your topic become available. Essentially, it helps you to customize the PubMed interface. These My NCBI filters are now grouped at the top right side of the page under the heading Filter your results. If you are not already using this very cool feature, be sure to create your My NCBI account now.
Just click 'Display Settings' to open up the dropdown menu
PubMed’s New Look! video series
Join me in the as I jump into the new interface and locate some of my favorite old PubMed features for searching the indexed literature. To learn about searching the health sciences and veterinary literature more efficiently, we can provide one-on-one consultations or group sessions using PubMed and other relevant databases. Register or drop-in for one of the scheduled classes on a variety of research topics, databases and bibliographic management software, Endnote, for organizing your research.
View the growing YouTube Playlist of instructional videos:
The Playlist for the PubMed’s New Look! series: http://tinyurl.com/ydnq346
Note: The PubMed series and other playlists of instructional videos will be available through our YouTube channel. Find out more about signing up for a free YouTube account, then subscribe to our channel to be alerted when we upload new videos. You’ll find the subscription button at the top left on the blue Library Video Channel title bar.
Note: If you have a fast broadband connection: click the ‘HD’ button & then the ‘full screen’ button on the bottom left of the YouTube player. Flash Player 10 is required to view HD videos on YouTube. If you do not have the latest version of the Flash Player, you will only see fuzzy versions of the video and no HD buttons will be present on your YouTube player. Find out more about the Adobe Flash Player 10+ for Windows, Firefox, Safari, Opera.
1. PubMed: the New Look & the Advanced Search features: part 1 [4:26 minutes]
2. PubMed: the New Look, Tutorials, Quick Citation Searches & Clinical Queries: part 2 [1:33 minutes]
3. PubMed: the New Look & Searching with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH): part 3 [2:37 minutes]
4. PubMed: the New Look, Emailing Search Results & Preparing for Endnote: part 4 [3:07 minutes]
5. PubMed: the New Look & Using Your Free My NCBI Account: part 5 [6:48 minutes]
The Send to dropdown menu
It is located at the top right of your search results. Clicking on Send to opens up a suite of options which include emailing search results, saving results to a Collection within the My NCBI free account and preparing results for the bibliographic management software, EndNote (free license for all UC Davis staff, students and faculty through the http://my.ucdavis.edu/software).
Preparing PubMed search results for Endnote:
The Send to dropdown menu is where you’ll be able to display your search results in MEDLINE view, then send to a ‘file’ that can later be imported into your Endnote database by choosing the PubMed NLM filter option.
Where has my Citation View gone?
I’m a happy PubMed fan once again, now that I’ve found out how to bring back the citation view for my search results. So, if you’re like me, and need to see your abstracts and full listing of MeSH headings listed, you’ll be able to turn on that feature in My NCBI.
If you do not currently have a My NCBI free account, just click on the link at the top right of the PubMed window and create an account.
To show the MeSH headings when in abstract view:
- Select ‘abstract’ from the ‘display settings’ dropdown menu
- Login or create a My NCBI account
- Select Preferences | Pubmed Preferences
- Select OPEN for Abstract Supplemental Data | Save.
And what about the wealth of information behind that old Details tab?
The intricate details of your PubMed searches are no longer hidden behind the details tab, but can be seen displayed along the right side of the window. Checking the search details is a good way to see just how PubMed is handling your search query. Be sure to contact one of us for assistance if you’re not finding what you need with your searches.
How to reach us:
email us, use the ‘Ask Now‘ chat reference, drop by the Carlson Health Sciences Library or Blaisdell Medical Library or call one of the reference librarians.
Read more
on the PubMed Redesign in the NLM Technical Bulletin, Sept.-Oct. 2009.
The 9 page handout includes detailed explanations on the My NCBI Filters, Limits and Related Data & discovery techniques.
Create a My NCBI account to help organize your PubMed searches & created quick and easy alerts to stay abreast of the research being published in your area.
About the Videos
The PubMed videos were created using screen capture software using Techsmith’s Camtasia for Mac and then exported into video editing software, Final Cut Pro. Camtasia for Windows offers enhanced features, including choices for animating the cursor. Both packages offer zoom and pan features for viewing close-ups of dropdown menus. All videos were recorded at full screen then scaled to 720p and encoded for YouTube. Learn more about optimizing your video uploads and producing videos from the YouTube Handbook.
Alternative screen capture programs for macs include: White Shiny Box’s iShowU, Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X, Techsmith’s Pro Jing and Telestream’s ScreenFlow 2.0 (one of my favorites that allows you to hide or show & animate the mouse). Windows options are many including Camtasia Studio, Pro Jing, Fraps for game capture. Mashable’s screencasting video tutorials for 12 popular products.
Note: some products come bundled with video editors such as Camtasia, ScreenFlow, Captivate, etc. Other screen capture/screencasting software require the video footage to be imported into a video editor for further editing, compression and encoding.
Bernadette Daly Swanson
