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PubMed Frequently Asked Questions
Last Updated: October 11, 2007
Note: Most of the FAQs answers link to the PubMed Help.
How do I find articles about my disease or condition?
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) cannot provide specific medical advice. NLM urges you to consult a qualified health care professional for answers to your medical questions. NLM does not have pamphlets or other materials to mail.
MedlinePlus will direct you to information to help answer health questions. MedlinePlus brings together authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations. Preformulated MEDLINE searches are included in MedlinePlus and give easy access to medical journal articles. MedlinePlus also has extensive information about drugs, an illustrated medical encyclopedia, interactive patient tutorials, and latest health news. Click on Consumer Health under Related Resources on the PubMed sidebar to access MedlinePlus.
What can I do about the PubMed error messages?
Please see the information about browsers and also ensure your browser and any servers you go through are enabled for Javascript (scripting), cookies, pop-ups, and HTTP 1.1 when you are using PubMed. Also, nlm.nih.gov should be considered a trusted site by your system(s). You may have to delete your browser's cache (temporary files) before trying again.
Why isn't there a link to the full-text for the citation I've retrieved?
Links are only available for journal publishers and full-text providers that participate in LinkOut or PubMed Central . Publishers who electronically supply their data to PubMed may include an icon link to a site providing the full-text. The provider's icon is displayed on the Abstract and Citation formats.
How can I find a journal, issue, or citation for a specific article?
PubMed's Single Citation Matcher is a fill-in-the-blank form that allows you to enter partial journal citation information to locate a record for a specific single article, or items indexed from a particular volume or issue of a journal. The Single Citation Matcher is available from PubMed's sidebar.
I found a misspelling in the citation. Can this be corrected?
Citations that carry the tag, [PubMed - in process] or [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] have not yet gone through NLM's quality control procedures and indexing process. It is during this process that errors are identified and corrected. It is not necessary to notify NLM of an error at this stage. However, if the error is still present when the above tags are no longer on the citation, please report it to the NLM Help Desk and include the information below (or as much as possible).
NLM leases its data to vendors around the world. Other products and services containing MEDLINE data will not necessarily reflect corrections made to records at NLM right away. If you search MEDLINE through a vendor's system, please contact your vendor about their maintenance schedules.
My name is misspelled on a citation. Can this be corrected?
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) displays the author's name as it appears in the article at the time of publication, only the last name plus the first two initials (e.g., Fauci AS) are used. Corrections for the misspelling of author names are handled as follows:
NLM's Typographical Error:
Citations that carry the tag, [PubMed - in process] or [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] have not yet gone through NLM's quality control procedures and indexing process. It is during this process that errors are identified and corrected. It is not necessary to notify NLM of an error at this stage. However, if the error is still present when the above tags are no longer on the citation, please report it to the NLM Help Desk and include the information below (or as much as possible).
NLM leases its data to vendors around the world. Other products and services will not necessarily immediately reflect corrections made to records at NLM. If you search MEDLINE through a vendor's system, please contact your vendor about their maintenance schedules.
Author's Name Printed Incorrectly in the Publication:
If the author's name was printed incorrectly at the time of publication, then the journal in which the article appeared must publish an erratum before NLM will make the correction in MEDLINE. If this is the case, please contact the journal publisher.
It is NLM's policy that errata are acknowledged only if they are printed in a citable form; that is, an erratum notice must appear on a numbered page in the journal that originally published the article. Error notices that are inserted unbound into a journal issue or "tipped in" will not be considered part of the permanent bibliographic record. NLM does not make changes in the database in response to letters from authors or editors, unless such letters indicate that a substantive published erratum is forthcoming.
For additional information on how NLM handles errors in MEDLINE, please review the NLM Errata, Retraction, Duplicate Publication, and Comment Policy fact sheet.
Can I use PubMed on my handheld device?
The PubMed Text Version will probably work well with your handheld. Additional NLM projects including access to PubMed using devices such as Palm Powered and Pocket PC handheld computers is available from the NLM Mobile page.
After I look at an abstract, I use my browser's back function to return to the total retrieval, but I get an error message such as, "Warning, this page has expired?" Do you have any suggestions?
If clearing the cache of your browser does not help, please see these suggestions.