PubMed

Ever wanted to filter your results to those that contain a certain term, are written by a specific author, or maybe appear in a specific journal or group of journals? Well... now you can!

My NCBI (the place in PubMed where you can save searches, create collections of citations, etc.) has a feature allows you to customize your filters for any of the Entrez databases. To create your own filter, simply log in to your My NCBI account (or create one... it only takes a moment) and click on the My NCBI link. In the filters box, choose the database you would like to set up the filter for. In this case, PubMed. Click "Add Filters for the selected database" or "Manage Filters."  Click on the "Create Custom Filter" box. You'll be asked to enter your own search strategy for your filter. This can be one term or multiple terms and should NOT include History search statement numbers.

For a filter to be effective, the search strategy should include field tags. For example, a filter for articles in BMJ, JAMA and NEJM would have the search strategy: "BMJ (Clinical research ed.)"[Jour] OR "JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association"[Jour] OR "The New England journal of medicine"[Jour]. The best way to get the field tags is to run your search in PubMed, then copy the strategy off the Search Details and then paste it back into the Custom Filters area mentioned above.

Once you've created your custom filter, you'll need to place a checkmark next to it to add it to your list. Note that you can add up to 15 filters for PubMed and 5 for all other databases.

Full instructions appear online. If you need assistance creating your search strategy for your filter, please call, email, or IM the reference librarians.

Happy filtering!