PubMed® Limits Page Updated
[Editor's Note: This feature was implemented in PubMed on March 15, 2006.]
[Editor's Note: An additional revision to Limits was made after this article was published. For more information, see: PubMed® Limits Page Revised. Technical Notes. NLM Tech Bull. 2006 Mar-Apr;(349):e1.]
t he PubMed Limits page will soon be redesigned to provide an improved interface to limit your search by age group, gender, human or animal studies, languages, publication types, dates and other parameters. Click the Limits tab to display the Limits page.
Enhancements include new limits such as "Links to free full text," the ability to choose one or more selections under categories such as Languages, and a search builder for authors and journals (see Figure 1).
Searching by Author or Journal
To search by author, click Add Author. An author search box will display. The author search box includes an autocomplete feature; enter a name in the Author name box and you will see a list of suggested names that gets shorter as you type more letters. As soon as you see the author name you are looking for, you may select that name (see Figure 2).
To add additional authors, click the Add Another Author link to open another author search box. The default author search is to include all author names in your search. To change this to search for any authors you selected click the radio button from All these authors to Any of these (see Figure 3). Click the remove link to delete an author search box.
Author names will automatically move to the PubMed search box when you click Go. Selected limits will be activated for any subsequent searches except for authors and journals. Author and journal selections will only be included in subsequent searches if they are not cleared from the PubMed search box (see Figure 4).
When Limits are "in effect," a check will appear in the Limits tab and your selected limits will display in a yellow bar. To turn off limits click off the Limits tab check box and run a new search.
To limit your search to a journal, click Add Journal. A journal search box will display. The journal search box also includes an autocomplete feature; enter a name in the journal name box and you will see a list of suggested names that gets shorter as you type more letters. As soon as you see the journal title you are looking for, you may select it. To add additional journals, click the Add Another Journal link to open another journal search box. Search results will include any of the selected journals. Journals will automatically move to the PubMed search box when you click Go. Author and journal selections will only be included in subsequent searches if they are not cleared from the PubMed search box (see Figure 4).
Full Text, Free Full Text, and Abstracts
To limit your search results to only citations that include a link to full text, a link to free full text, or an abstract, click the appropriate checkboxes (see Figure 5).
Dates
You may limit your search to articles published or added to PubMed by a pre-set date range (see Figure 6) or you may enter any desired date range (see Figure 7).
Additional Limits Categories
Limits categories for Humans or Animals, Gender, Languages, Subsets, Type of Article (Publication Types) and Ages have been modified to allow users to choose multiple selections within each category. The complete lists of languages and publication types are also now available under the labels: More Languages and More Publication Types.
Scroll through the Subsets category to display topics such as Systematic Reviews, journal groups such as nursing journals, and more subsets such as PubMed Central (see Figure 8).
Note: Search limits may exclude in process and publisher-supplied citations (see Figure 9).
Tag Terms
To limit untagged search terms to a specific citation field or by Text Word, choose a field from the Tag Terms All Fields menu located at the bottom of the PubMed Limits page.
Go and Clear All Limits buttons are available at the bottom of the Limits page. The Go button function at the top and bottom of the page is equivalent.
Please see the PubMed online Help for an explanation of categories and selections in Limits.
Canese K. PubMed® Limits Page Updated. NLM Tech Bull. 2006 Mar-Apr;(349):e2.
