1. Important Terms
Before you take the lessons; you have to read,
search and understand those wonderful terms !
Let’s START
MEDLINE - MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database covering
the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical
sciences.
PubMed - A free interface that provides access to the MEDLINE database.
Index Medicus - MEDLINE's print counterpart. A bibliographic list of citations to articles from over
3,500 of the world's biomedical journals.
Journal - a periodical published on a regular basis.
Record - a collection of data about a single unit in a database; in PubMed, each record represents one
journal article. Each record or citation is composed of many fields.
Field - one of many units in a record (or citation) in a database. In PubMed, fields include author, title,
abstract, publication type, language, and MeSH headings, among others.
Publication Type - Describes the type of material the article represents (e.g., Review, Clinical Trial,
Editorial, Letter).
Citation - In PubMed, a citation is a representation of a journal article. It includes many fields, such as
the author, article title, journal title, year, volume, issue and page numbers. A citation is a synonym of
record.
MeSH - stands for medical subject heading. MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled
vocabulary system.
Major MeSH - The MeSH terms that are the main points of the article.
Subheadings - A term used with a MeSH heading to help focus on a specific aspect of the subject.

2. Automatic Term Mapping - the automatic linking from a word or phrase that is not a MeSH term to
one that is a MeSH term.
Indexed - assigned controlled vocabulary terms.
Indexed by - chosen for inclusion in a database.
Entrez Date - the date that a record is entered into MEDLINE.
ISSN - International Standard Serial Numbers. A unique code used for identifying serial publications,
such as periodicals, newspapers, annuals, journals and monographic series.
PMID - The unique identifier assigned to a record when it enters PubMed.
PubMed in Process - records that have not yet been assigned MeSH indexing terms.
Query Box - The active box at the top of every PubMed page where search terms are entered.
Keyword Search - To search a database using keywords (important words describing the main idea of
an article).
Boolean Operators - AND, OR, and NOT are Boolean operators. Boolean operators are used to
combine search terms.
Limits - Parameters (publication date, publication type, language etc.) used to narrow a database search.
LinkOut - A PubMed service that allows publishers, libraries, and other institutions to display links to
their sites on items from PubMed. These links can take you to the provider's site to obtain the full-text of
articles.