Recent Activity Extended with My NCBI

The Recent Activity feature displays your last five interactions with PubMed® and other databases. This feature has been expanded to record up to six months of activity in My NCBI. Activity is recorded while you are signed in to My NCBI and includes recent PubMed searches and AbstractPlus views. Recent Activity on the search results screen will soon be updated to include a direct link to My NCBI Recent Activity. For now, find it using the link on the My NCBI Home screen (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Link for Recent Activity on the My NCBI Home screen.

This feature is valuable for finding searches and document views no longer in History which expires after eight hours of inactivity or if cookies are deleted. If, for example, you need to return to a search you did last week, you can find a link for it in My NCBI Recent Activity and run the search. Or, in another example, if you want to re-read an abstract you found last month in PubMed, you can find a link to it in My NCBI Recent Activity (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Use the link for the entry to run a search or revisit a record.

Recent Activity entries are sorted by date, or you can change the sort to application (i.e., database). Check boxes let you select items, by date group, or individual items for the following actions:

• Remove Entries
• Create Saved Search
• Move to Collection
• More Options — this includes Clear (delete current entries) and Turn Off (stop recording). These features are also available on the search results display of Recent Activity.

Recent Activity has a search function. The default search is for entry titles. Clicking on "Additional Criteria" gives more options, i.e., to search within documents and search results, and to limit the search to queries or all records in Recent Activity (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Search feature for Recent Activity.

Notes about Recent Activity

• If PubMed has been used on a computer and within eight hours someone signs in to My NCBI, the last five interactions may be recorded in My NCBI.
• Searches cannot be combined within Recent Activity. To combine searches, click on the links to run them in PubMed. Use the History feature's capability to combine searches.
• Items older than six months will be removed from Recent Activity. Consider moving searches you want to keep to a saved search, and document views to a collection.

By Annette M. Nahin
MEDLARS Management Section

Nahin AM. Recent Activity Extended with My NCBI. NLM Tech Bull. 2009 Jul-Aug;(369):e1.