Tip #17: Limit PubMed to Results with ClinicalTrials.gov Data

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Many thanks to Erica Lake (Outreach Coordinator, NNLM Region 6), and Amanda Sawyer and Jessica Chan from the NCBI PubMed team for this week's tip!

A quick and easy way to find PubMed citations linked to clinical studies in the ClinicalTrials.gov database is to use the Secondary Source ID field tag:
 
clinicaltrials.gov [si]

[si] stands for stands for “secondary source ID,” and includes links to data discussed in PubMed citations. ClinicalTrials.gov is one of the data repositories included in this field. A complete list of databank sources can be found here: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/medline_databank_source.html

To limit a PubMed search to citations with links to ClinicalTrials.gov, enter ClinicalTrials.gov [si] followed by your search term(s). For example, to find registered clinical trials utilizing virtual reality, enter the following in the search box: clinicaltrials.gov [si] virtual reality



For example, this result from the above search...


 
...is linked to this clinical trial record:


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