Pubmed Screencast

Introduction

Hi! My name is Félicia, and I study Natural Science since 2023. This program is a Pre-University program that provides students with a strong foundation in a lot of subject, like biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. We learn how to think like a scientist and how to read and analyze scientific publications. Core courses include general and organic chemistry, electricity and magnetism and calculus. Then, at university, you can study medicine, biochemistry, and pharmacology, for example.

Since biology is a complex subject, you will never know everything about biology, so it's important to be able to expand your knowledge by yourself without any teacher.

This is why, in this screencast, I am going to show you how to use the website PubMed in order to find credible information about a specific subject.

So, get ready to learn how to use PubMed!

You might be surprised by all the useful functionalities of this website.

The Problem

Imagine you have to write a research paper on a specific subject. You will need reliable, up-to-date information.

If you plan of relying on general websites or blogs, it is a really bad idea, because more often than not, these websites provided inaccurate information.

Instead, you should use PubMed to search for peer-reviewed articles and clinical studies on the topic.

I will show you how to that in a minute, but let's start by a quick tour of the website.

The Quest

First, open your browser, and type : pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and press inter, or type '' pubmed'' and click on the first on the website named NIH.

In the middle of the screen, there is a search bar. You can type any key-words related to the topic you are interested in, for example, ''antibiotic resistance bacteria'', then press enter.

In the top right corner of the screen, there is a login button, but you don't have to create an account if you don't want to.

At the top of the screen in the middle, you still have the search bar in case you want to modify your key-words.

On the left hand side of the screen, you have all the filters you can apply to narrow down your research.

In the middle of the screen, you have all the article that matches your key-words and the filters you applied.

You can scroll down and click on ''show more results'' if you want to see more article.

The Solution

Now, I am going to show you, step by step, how to find the information you need.

First of all, you have to figure out if you should add a publication filter. If your subject is evolving fast, like covid-19 treatment, you at least need to click on ''five years'' button or ideally on the ''one year'' button, just under ''Publication Date'' If the information you are looking for is well-known, like the functioning of photosynthesis, there is no need to add a publication date filter.

Next, on the left hand side of the screen, I suggest that you to click on ''Free Full Text'', under ''Text Availability''. This will make sure you don't have to pay to have access to the article you are interested in.

Then, scroll down until you see ''Article Type'' and press ''See All Article Type Filters''. As you can see, there are a lot of different types of articles, and they don't have the same value. A case report is a detailed account of the diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of an individual patient. It's considered low-level evidence since it focus on just one person. Clinical trials involve many participant and uses careful method to compare outcome between groups. It's one of the most reliable forms of evidence. Meta-analyses combine the results of many studies on the same topic to see the overall trend. Since it summarized a large amount of evidence, it's one of the highest levels of scientific evidence.

So, if you want, you can apply a type of article filter by clicking on what type of article you want. You can scroll down to see all of them, and click on what type of article you need. Then, press '' Apply'' in the bottom right corner.

After that, read the title of the articles to see if one of them is relevant. If you are not sure, you can also read the little paragraph. Then, click on the title. Next, you can scroll down to do a cursory reading of the abstract. Then, scroll up. In the top right corner, you can click on ''Full Free Text'' to have access to the full article. Next, if you want to cite this article, it's simple. Click on the blue button ''Cite'', and make sure to select the format you want by clicking on the button in the bottom right corner. Then, you are ready to hit 'copy' in the bottom left corner.