The search tools and search strategies highlighted on this page will help you do more targeted searches for scholarly articles related to your topic. Using these tools and strategies is one way to cut through the "noise" or extraneous information you encounter in general-purpose tools like Google, Google Scholar, or even 1Search.

Before getting started on your literature research, you should know about the tool you are using to do that research. Let's start with....

The PubMed database provides free access to the MEDLINE database (available as a stand-alone subscription database...you have access as an OSU student), but also includes citations to other literature not found in MEDLINE (see the bulleted list on this fact sheet). The article citations in PubMed span the biomedical and health literature including life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering. PubMed is maintained by the National Library of Medicine.

The PubMed single search box offers a quick and easy way to start searching for articles on your topic. Enter keywords or phrases that capture the primary aspects of your topic into the default PubMed search box. Don't use full sentences or punctuation or search operators like AND/OR/NOT.

See the image below or watch this short PubMed Find Articles on a Topic video tutorial.

Once you have some search results, you can explore the MeSH terms (Medical Subject Headings) assigned to article records to look for additional relevant search terms. Think of MeSH terms like "tags" (that are often used in social media posts). MeSH terms are specific to PubMed and provide a consistent language to describe or label concepts that various authors may describe differently.

The example article record below shows its MeSH terms and highlights several that might be helpful for revising the initial search to find related articles.

If you wish to run a more focused search, you can structure your search to have PubMed limit where it searches for the terms you use. In the example below, the search is structured to have PubMed look for the terms only in the MeSH field (rather than fields like article title or abstract or journal title). You must be on the Advanced Search screen (look for the "Advanced" link under the search box) to construct this kind of search.

1. On the Advanced search screen, select the appropriate MeSH field (there are several options depending on how specific you want to be) from the drop-down menu.
2. Enter the MeSH terms you have identified and add the terms to the query box with OR (if the term/s are synonyms) or AND (if the term/s represent very different concepts).

Once you have the terms you want added to the query box, click the blue Search button to the right of the query box to run your search. PubMed will take you out to the results page.

Search results can be refined to include only those articles that provide some level of evidence that the intervention/program works. Use the See all article type filters link at the bottom of the Article Type filter section to select additional options to show in the list.

Uncheck filters or use the Clear all link (at top of search results column) before doing the next search. PubMed filters are "sticky" as they do not automatically reset between searches.