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Medical Reference Services Quarterly
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PubMed 2.0
Jacob White
To cite this article: Jacob White (2020) PubMed 2.0, Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 39:4,
382-387, DOI: 10.1080/02763869.2020.1826228
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2020.1826228
Published online: 21 Oct 2020.
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ONLINE UPDATES
Emily Vardell, Column Editor
PubMed 2.0
Jacob White
A.R. Dykes Library, The University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, USA
ABSTRACT
After years of strategic planning, the National Library of
Medicine has introduced an updated and redesigned version
of its PubMed health sciences research website. The new website
features a more modern and responsive interface, especially
on mobile devices. Tools and features have been
relocated to make them more intuitive for new users. While
not without some turbulence and slight discomfort for longtime
users adjusting to the modernized interface and search
engine, the new version of the PubMed website introduced in
2020 succeeds in the website’s time-honored task of collecting
and making freely accessible high-quality health sciences
information and resources.
KEYWORDS
National Library of
Medicine; online databases;
PubMed; review
Background
PubMed is the premier research database for the health sciences. Produced
by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the
National Library of Medicine, PubMed is used by health care researchers,
practitioners, and students around the globe. An updated version of the
PubMed website was released in early 2020. The new home page is more
responsive to modifying the dimensions of the window on a desktop, and
features are easier to access and use on the mobile version. The three primary
columns on legacy PubMed—“Using PubMed,” “PubMed Tools,” and
“More Resources”—have been replaced with “Learn,” “Find,” “Download,”
and “Explore.” Changing the headings of these columns to action verbs
related to information use makes PubMed more accessible for beginners
and better advertises PubMed’s features (Figure 1).
The new PubMed website offers the same information resources as the
previous version, namely MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and a collection of
free e-books on health sciences topics.1
In total, this adds up to over 30
million citations, sourced from over 5,300 journals currently indexed in
CONTACT Jacob White jwhite14@kumc.edu A.R. Dykes Library, The University of Kansas Medical Center,
3901 Rainbow Blvd., Mail Stop 1050, Kansas City, KS 66160 USA.
Comments and suggestions should be sent to the Column Editor: Emily Vardell ( evardell@emporia.edu).
ß 2020 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
MEDICAL REFERENCE SERVICES QUARTERLY
2020, VOL. 39, NO. 4, 382–387
https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2020.1826228
MEDLINE and nearly 3,000 journals that have deposited material into
PubMed Central. These resources continue to provide value added over
other free search tools due to the rigor of the selection process for inclusion
into MEDLINE and the strength of the Medical Subject Heading
(MeSH) thesaurus, a term index carefully maintained by the NCBI and
updated late in each calendar year. The National Center for Biotechnology
Information also responded to analytics indicating that about one in three
PubMed searches includes an author name.2
PubMed now features faster
citation matching abilities but still remains a viable tool for creating a
bibliography.
The new PubMed emphasizes minimal strategizing or search building
prior to carrying out the search. The new PubMed training material discourages
the use of special characters or Boolean operators in the construction
of the initial search. Among these is the “Results by Year” graph,
which allows the researcher to track trends easily in the literature or filter
by a specific year (see Figure 2). Article type, text availability, age, and language
filters are among the popular tools carried over from the old
PubMed. PubMed basic search encourages users to employ automated term
mapping and displays results by best match, more closely approximating
the search experience of widely used general search engines. The user’s
expectation that the best result will be on the first page, with empirical
data supporting that this phenomenon is exacerbated on mobile devices,
was one driving factor behind the changes made to the PubMed website.2
Figure 1. The new PubMed home page.
MEDICAL REFERENCE SERVICES QUARTERLY 383
PubMed mobile
One primary modification undergone by PubMed in this new update is
vastly improved usability on portrait-aspect ratio devices (see Figure 3).
The previous version of PubMed required users to rotate their mobile devices
back and forth from portrait to landscape to comfortably type a search
query and then view a results list. While many of the latest smartphones
feature large, high-definition displays, using PubMed on older and smaller
smartphones is neither tenable nor sustainable in the long term, driving
users to other information resources that are either subscription based or
lack the quality control elements many health sciences researchers value
from PubMed compared to other freely available search tools.
PubMed’s new, mobile friendly website is aesthetically pleasing and
neatly organized. Longtime users of PubMed should find it familiar enough
to navigate, and students and other new users will find it intuitive and
responsive. Importantly, the new website affirms NCBI’s values of providing
free access to the MEDLINE bibliographic index for improving one’s
health at both the personal and the global levels. In many parts of the
world, mobile devices remain the primary method of accessing the web. In
resource-limited environments, the new PubMed could have a positive
impact on evidence- and statistics-based healthcare delivery. Programs specially
designed for information access in resource-limited environments,
such as HINARI3
, may see an increase in engagement as healthcare
Figure 2. PubMed search results page.
384 J. WHITE
practitioners are able to more easily find citations in PubMed on their
mobile devices.
Comparison with other tools
With its vast coverage and freely accessible website, PubMed is by far the
most commonly used online database in health sciences learning environments.
A link for full-text access to PubMed is a staple of health sciences
library home pages. For millions of researchers, students, clinicians, and
members of the general public, PubMed is the front door to the health sciences
literature. That being said, there are types of research inquiries that may
Figure 3. PubMed interface on a mobile device.
MEDICAL REFERENCE SERVICES QUARTERLY 385
be better served on an alternative platform to MEDLINE, or even on search
engines with undefined coverage and less transparent search algorithms.
One such case, which NCBI has acknowledged and is working toward
ameliorating, is when trying to find research output from a specific section
of a journal.2
For instance, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery has a section
called “Hand/Peripheral Nerve.” This information is not included in the
MEDLINE indexing for this journal, so no search strategy can capture that
specific article set. The transparency and ease of access to metadata in
PubMed remains one of its great strengths, and the ability to easily generate
a formatted citation from a PubMed entry page is valuable for novice
researchers who do not use a citation manager. However, because PubMed
metadata is not as comprehensive as Google Scholar full web page indexing,
searches seeking articles from a specific section of a journal are, for
now, best carried out in Google Scholar.
While there are forms of bibliometric research or comprehensive searching
that may require alternative resources, clinicians continue to appreciate
certain PubMed features, such as Clinical Queries, for providing helpful filters
and rapid access to necessary clinical information.4
Combined with an
improved mobile interface, some librarians may be inclined to collaborate
with educators to encourage the use of PubMed Clinical Queries in educational
settings where students currently use proprietary information resources
considered less appropriate for that context.5
Librarians might
collaborate with problem-based or case-based learning instructors to guide
students to Clinical Queries early in their studies, encouraging access to a
free resource they will have access to throughout their careers.6
Conclusion
The PubMed/MEDLINE/MeSH resources provided by NCBI are terrific
educational and research resources that open the door to more complex
navigation for health sciences information seekers. Understanding how bibliographic
databases, term thesauri, and search filters operate is fundamental
to confidently navigating published biomedical research and carrying
out complex projects such as systematic reviews. Resources such as Ovid
MEDLINE and Embase.com have better tools for power users, such as
adjacency, suggested synonyms, and combined search history/results pages,
making them the preferred domain for expert literature searchers7,8
and
those with more specific needs. However, PubMed/MEDLINE remains the
premier research website for the global healthcare community, and the
updates rolled out by NCBI at the beginning of 2020 should have a lasting
positive impact on patient safety, quality improvement, and evidence-based
practice worldwide.
386 J. WHITE
Notes on contributor
Jacob White, MLS (jwhite14@kumc.edu) is a Health Sciences Librarian in the School of
Medicine Liaison at A.R. Dykes Library, The University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas
City, KS 66160 USA.
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(2005).
2. Fiorini, Nicolas, David J. Lipman, and Zhiyong Lu. “Towards PubMed 2.0.” eLife 6
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3. Saric, Karin. “HINARI Access to Research in Health Program Networks to Sustain
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(2016): 338–341. doi:10.3163/1536-5050.104.4.018
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