Users Guide to Search Results

If you select one of your search results, you will find a lot of information about the citation!

  • Author(s): select the name of any author(s) to see other articles they have written
  • Abstract: the abstract should show you very quickly if this article is a useful one.
  • PMID: A unique PubMed ID number (which you can use to find the article again later)

At the top left corner. You will see: 

  • Save: allows you to save different formats of the citation to file
  • Email: allows you to send formats of the citation via email
  • Send To: allows you to send the citation to Clipboard, My Bibliography, Collections, and Citation manager
    • Item in clipboard will appear in red letters next to the Related citations link. (NOTE: the Clipboard is temporary and will go away when you close PubMed. There are several options for actions on your references from the Clipboard, so do something with them if you want to keep them.)
  • Display options: allows you to view different formats of the citation 

At the bottom of the page, note:

  • Related citations - very useful!
  • MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) terms for this article. They appear in relevance order, so you will probably find the closest hits at the beginning of the list. Click one to see other items associated with that MeSH term; you can also add the term to your search to help refine your results.

Don't forget to check the article's References! Another great way to extend your search.

Saving Your References

PubMed does not allow direct export to any reference software such as Zotero or Endnote. You can find more information here on managing your references.

Simply follow these simple steps. You can send individual citations, but it's more efficient to collect the ones you want, save them to the Clipboard, and export them all at once.

Please note: PubMed supports the export of up to 10,000 citations 

  • Select the Send to button and select File as the destination.
  • Select Send to Citation Manager.
  • A popup box will appear (make sure your popup blocker is off if it doesn't) with a .txt version of the citation.
  • You may either Copy the file (good if there are only a few citations) or Save it.
  • Open your reference management software - EndNote, Zotero, etc.
  • Simply Import the citations - either by copying and pasting or importing the file.