Tip #31: Proximity searching is now available in PubMed!

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 Guest post by Erika Lake, erica-lake@uiowa.edu

The National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce proximity search capabilities have been added to PubMed. This means you can now search for multiple terms appearing in any order within a specified distance of one another in the [Title] or [Title/Abstract] fields.

You’ll find details on how to build a proximity search as well as examples in the new NLM Technical Bulletin article, PubMed Update: Proximity Search Now Available in PubMed.

You can also check out the newly added “Proximity Searching” section of the PubMed User Guide here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/help/#proximity-searching

Finally, NLM’s Office of Education and Training and NCBI have assembled a Quick Tour introducing users to the basics of Proximity Searching, which can be found via this direct link. This tour has also been added to the PubMed Trainer’s Toolkit.

Have fun exploring, and email Erica Lake at erica-lake@uiowa.edu to let her know what you think.

Comments

  1. Wichor BramerJanuary 6, 2023 at 7:13 AM

    I must say i am not really impressed by it. It is great that they offer proximity searching but it is kinda useless if you cannot combine multiple terms or use truncation.

    ReplyDelete

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