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CAPACITY Resource Guide

This guide was developed for the CAPACITY program through Emory University's School of Nursing.

Keyword Searches & ATM

For a simple keyword search, type the words you are looking for into the search box, and click Search. PubMed will use automatic term mapping (ATM) to search for the keywords you're entering and the appropriate MeSH term. 

The search below for 'hiccup*' or its synonym, 'singultus', shows that 1,229 citations were retrieved with the date limited to 2003-2023.  The search was sorted by Best match.

The search PubMed actually did looks like this:

Display Settings

Click Display Options to change how much information you see for each citation and the number shown per page. Use the Sort by pull down menu to change how your citations are sorted.
Click Abstract from the pull-down menu, or click on the hyperlinked article title, to see the full citation, abstract, and related records information. 

Using Filters

Be cautious when using these filters:  Age, Species, Sex, Article Type

These filters apply MeSH terms to your search, which may exclude some citations because they have not yet completed the MEDLINE indexing process. The most recent citations are the ones most likely to be excluded.

Note that when check off a box to 'Show' a filter, you must check it off again on the main page to activate it.  Once you activate it a message will show, such as: 

Text Availability

Don’t exclude articles based on “Text availability.”  You can always get what you need through Emory through interlibrary loan if we don't have access to a particular journal.

Like certain filters, if you exclude based on text availability, you won't know what you're not seeing.

Shortcuts & Advanced Techniques

Phrase searching: You can bypass ATM by searching for a specific phrase using quotation marks.

Search by PMID: If you know the PMID (PubMed ID) or PMCID (PubMed Central ID) just enter that number in the PubMed search box to bring up the record.

Similar Articles: Look at the Similar Articles that are retrieved with each citation on the search results page, or in the right-hand column on an article abstract page. Looking up related articles is a quick way to find other results that are very similar to ones you already have.

Field Tags: Use Field Tags, as shown here, to bypass ATM. See full list below.

Proximity searching: Search for terms within a certain distance from each other in the title or title and abstract.

Example: "methotrexate toxicity"[tiab:~6] 

Saving, Printing, & Emailing

Use the 'Send to' button to:

  • Temporarily store articles of interest on the Clipboard for up to 8 hours.
  • Send citations to your online 'My Bibliography'.
  • Send citations to a Citation Manager such as EndNote or Zotero.
  • Create a Collection that saves your citations to your PubMed account.

To add an article to the Clipboard, check the box next to the article, and select Clipboard from the Send To box. You will see a message stating that your article has been posted to the Clipboard.

After you have placed items in the Clipboard, a link will show under the search box telling you how many items you have. Articles already posted to the clipboard are marked below their citation information with "Item in Clipboard."