Work More Efficiently This Year by Registering for a My NCBI Account

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Registering for a My NCBI account – if you have never done so – is a great way to start off your year doing research. “My NCBI is a tool that retains user information and database preferences to provide customized services for many NCBI databases.”

Here are some ways that My NCBI will enhance your PubMed user experience:

  • A My NCBI account extends PubMed’s capabilities to allow for more permanent saving of one’s work. With a My NCBI account searchers can not only save lists of relevant article citations, but they can also save entire search strategies to be re-run at a later date. This can translate into a significant reduction in the duplication of effort over time. Without a MyNCBI account, a PubMed user can only save their literature search strategies and selected citations for up to eight hours in the Clipboard (provided their browser is set to accept cookies).
  • A My NCBI account makes sharing lists of selected citations with colleagues easier than ever. When a “Collection” of citations is saved in My NCBI, the account owner has the option to make this list public or private. If set to “Public”, a persistent URL is generated that can be “copied and pasted” into other documents/email for sharing with others. With PubMed, collaborating on a manuscript with co-authors or generating a shareable bibliography does not have to involve commercial citation management software.
  • A My NCBI account allows you to set up a personalized current awareness system. My NCBI accounts not only allow for the saving of search strategies that can be re-run in PubMed by the account owner at a later date, but they also give the account owner the opportunity to set up a “Search Alert”. The search alert is essentially an e-mail update of new search results that are based on a saved search strategy, delivered in the format and frequency of the account owner’s choosing. Staying on top of the literature of your favorite topic could not be more painless!
  • A My NCBI account allows you to permanently save your preferences for PubMed’s display settings. If you are someone who likes to view the Author Information related to each citation or always likes to view the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) applied to a citation in the abstract view, you can override the default “minimized” PubMed settings by re-setting and saving your preferences. A few less clicks here and there add up to considerable time savings in the long run.

To learn more about MyNCBI features, consider registering for an upcoming PubMed class or feel free to contact us at the MSK Library.