PubMed: Using the Search Filters
Channel: University of Alabama Libraries
Date: 29/06/2020

In this video, we'll demonstrate how to use PubMed's search filters in order to become a more effective, efficient searcher. 



Transcript: 

Hi, my name is Alex, I'm a librarian at The University of Alabama, and in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to use PubMed's search filters in order to make your searching easier and more efficient. 
In this tutorial, I'm going to try to find some articles about the effectiveness of diabetes self-management education programs. We'll start with a simple keyword search. 
Even if you're using basic keyword searching, you can always enhance the precision of your searches by using the search filters on the left-hand side of the screen. 
Some of these are relatively intutitive. If you need more recent articles, you can always use the date slider to weed out older content. Alternatively you can use the predetermined date ranges below. 
Then there's the text availability filter. Not everything on PubMed is immediately available in full-text. Therefore, you might be tempted to check the "free full text" box. That would, however, eliminate all articles that are not considered open access. Some articles that aren't open access are provided in full-text to you because of your affiliation with The University of Alabama. We pay for access so that you can use them. Therefore, I would recommend just choosing "full text" or leaving it alone entirely. 
You can also choose a specific article type, and there's a whole range of additional filters under the "additional filters" button. 
Here you'll find more article type options, species options, language, sex, subject, journal, and finally age. I find the age limiter to be especially useful. It can save you the trouble of adding descriptive keywords like "elderly," and "children." 
That's all for this tutorial. We have other PubMed tutorials available if you want to learn more. And if you have a question, just ask a librarian.