Automated allocation of MeSH-terms with controls

For several months now, MeSH-terms have been assigned automatically, combined with human control of certain records - i.e. 1 to 2 days after the records are entered into PubMed, they are already keyworded. Before that, it took an average of over 100 days for an article to be intellectually "indexed" with thematic terms by staff on the basis of the full text (more or less time, depending on the journal).

"Online first" articles (called "online ahead of print" in PubMed) that are later assigned to an issue (print or online) are still indexed at this later point in time.

Proximity search in simple form

Recently, PubMed has introduced a simple form of word distance search.

It works with two or three terms (more do not make sense in our opinion) in inverted commas for the fields [Title] or [ti] or [Title/Abstract] or [tiab] with specification of the maximum words in between within the field identifier ([...:~N]), regardless of the order of the specified terms. Truncation of the terms with * is not allowed.

In the example "accidental overdose" [Title/Abstract:~3] AND acetaminophen from the help page mentioned below, more than twice as many hits are found due to the proximity specification.

With :~0 only the order may be different, but no words in between, the example is "patient physician relationship" [tiab:~0].

See here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/help/#proximity-searching.

You can find more information on how to use PubMed on our website.