How To Search/BioMed Central
- Purpose: "BioMed Central is an independent publishing house committed to providing immediate free access to peer-reviewed biomedical research." [1]
- Audience: People researching topics in the field of biomedicine.
- Scope: Biomedical research.
- Refresh Rate: ?
- Further Information: In order to perform advanced searches on BioMed Central, you are required to create a login name and password. This is free but somewhat inconvenient.
Boolean Operators
edit| Boolean Operator |
Syntax | Example |
|---|---|---|
| AND | AND | skunk AND tomato |
| OR | OR | skunk OR tomato |
| NOT | NOT | skunk NOT tomato |
Other Operators
edit| Syntax | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| "" | "skunk smell removal" |
phrase search |
Search Fields
edit| Syntax | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| [PG] | 125 [PG] |
article number or first page number |
| [AU] | rogers [AU] |
author name |
| [AD] | hopkins [AD] |
institutional affiliation or author addresses |
| [TIAB] | brain [TIAB] AND cancer [TIAB] AND jones [TIAB] |
search only the citation and abstract |
| [DISC] | 'inaccurate results" [DISC] |
search the discussion/conclusion section of texts |
| [DOI] | search the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | |
| [FIG] | "rate of change" [FIG] |
search figure legends |
| [INTR] | doctoral [INTR] |
search the introduction section |
| [IP] | search by issue | |
| [TA] | neuroscience [TA] |
search the journal title, abbreviation, or ISSN |
| [METH] | "statistical sample" [METH] |
search the methods section of an article |
| [RES] | innaccurate [RES] |
search the results section of an article |
| [REF] | barnes [REF] AND metcalf[REF] |
search reference sections |
| [BDY] | "cranial splint" [BDY] |
search text bodies (excludes citation and abstract) |
| [TI] | "stomach cancer" [TI] |
search titles |
| [TW] | "stomach cancer" [TW] |
search title, abstract, and text (excludes abstract) |
| [VI] | 5 [VI] |
search volume number |
| [DP] | 1999 [DP] |
search year of publication |
Other Features
editBioMed Central also allows a number of searches which can only be done using templates on their web pages. These include content sets (BioMed Central Journals, The Scientist news), date ranges, and "added in last" (last 1 day, 7 days, 30 days).
Other features not directly impacting search results include number of results shown per page, order in which results are shown, and whether to show the abstract or not.
More Example Searches
editThe Following example will find all articles written by someone named either "jones" or "smith" and that contains the word "assessment" and the word "pain" in the body of the text.
(jones [AU] OR smith [AU) AND assessment [BDY] AND pain [BDY]