Category Archives: About Resources

Browsing Search Results in PubMed

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When browsing your search results list in PubMed you have different options to help you navigate the list. They are related to the sort order of your search results, the format of records to view, and the ability to initially select references and put them aside to look at them closely later, as well as make changes to your selection(s). These options are explained below in more detail.

Changing Sort Order

You may change the default sort order of your search results depending on your search objective.

  1. If you need to find some most relevant articles quickly or your search topic is not time sensitive you may use Best Match sort order which is the PubMed default. Your most relevant search results (as determined by an internal algorithm) are found on the top of the results list and results may become less relevant as you go down the list. However, since there are no perfect algorithms, you may actually find the references you like most are not on the top but further down the results list.
  2. In other instances, you may want to see the most recent references at the top of your search results list, which is typical in most searches in the field of biomedicine. For that you will need to change the default. Click on the Display Option next to the Sort By in the right corner above the search results and change Best Match to Most Recent or Publication Date (with an arrow looking downward) from the drop down box.
  3. Sometimes you may prefer to see the oldest references first (when conducting a History of Medicine search, for example) and you may want to re-sort your results list in an ascending chronological order by clicking the Publication Date option with an upward arrow.

NOTE: Once you change the Sort By default, PubMed will remember your most recent selection and make it a default for you until you change it again. This may not work if you are on Virtual Desktop though.

Viewing Abstracts

You may also choose the format of references in your search results list.
If you want to browse the search results and read the abstracts at the same time you may do any of the following:

  1. Click on the articles’ titles to see the abstracts – one at a time
  2. Click on the Display Options and change the Format from Summary to Abstract to see the search results list in the abstract format

Displaying search results as a PMID list

New PubMed was enhanced with the new PubMed IDs display capabilities. You may display your search results as the list of PMIDs by clicking Display Options > Format > PMID. This will allow copying the PMID list to a document or e-mail and, when needed, restoring the references by pasting the PMIDs back in Pubmed search box and searching on them (see an older post on searching by PMIDs).

Sending to Clipboard

If you want to select references first and look at your selection in more detail later (such as if you are running multiple searches) use the Clipboard feature. Select (check mark) references when browsing the search results list; when done – click on Send To button above the search results and click Clipboard. You will be prompted to go to Clipboard immediately but you can do it any time before you shut down your computer – the moment you put something in Clipboard the Clipboard link appears under the PubMed search box.

In Clipboard, you may review your selected references again and make other choices, e.g. delete references from Clipboard. You also have the same options in Clipboard as in the search results list, e.g. you can send the references to your My NCBI account, or send to Citation Manager. Clipboard Details in Advanced Search (Clipboard is always the last line in the History and Search Details) are displayed as a PMID list.

NOTE: References will disappear from Clipboard after 8 hours of inactivity.

MSK Publications Trivia: In Which Journals did MSK Authors Most Frequently Publish in 2019?

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MSK Authors published over 5,000 works in 2019, including journal articles, meeting abstracts, conference papers, and books. Here are the 10 most common journals for the 3,240 articles collected in Synapse* for 2019, along with their journal impact factor, taken from the Journal Citation Report produced by Clarivate Analytics. 

2019 Top Journals

This chart comes from the 2019 Synapse Publications Report, our annual review of MSK’s research publications. Check it out to see more trivia about our authors and their publications. 

For more information, feel free to contact us. 

*Note: In Synapse this category also includes editorials, letters, guidelines, and reviews.

Double Screening in Systematic Reviews

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As anyone who has worked on a systematic review (SR) knows, screening references for the study selection stage of the SR process can be quite time consuming and labor intensive. Ideally, the screening should be done by two people working independently, so it is a lot of work – times two! It’s not surprising, therefore, that many researchers wonder:

  • if they can get away with single screening
  • if there exists some way to automate part, or all, of the screening stage

Single Screening vs. Double Screening

An August 2020 paper by Mahtani et al. explores the latest evidence on this topic (see some examples listed below) and summarizes the guidance from leading evidence synthesis organizations/producers like the Cochrane Collaboration, the Joanna Briggs Institute, the Campbell Collaboration, and the Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Standards for Systematic Reviews of Comparative Effectiveness Research – all of whom recommend (in their handbooks and documentation) that at least two people working independently be involved in the screening process.

Mahtani KR, Heneghan C, Aronson J. Single screening or double screening for study selection in systematic reviews? BMJ Evid Based Med. 2020 Aug;25(4):149-150. doi: 10.1136/bmjebm-2019-111269. Epub 2019 Nov 13. PMID: 31722997. 

Waffenschmidt S, Knelangen M, Sieben W, Bühn S, Pieper D. Single screening versus conventional double screening for study selection in systematic reviews: a methodological systematic review. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2019 Jun 28;19(1):132. doi: 10.1186/s12874-019-0782-0. PMID: 31253092; PMCID: PMC6599339. 

Edwards P, Clarke M, DiGuiseppi C, Pratap S, Roberts I, Wentz R. Identification of randomized controlled trials in systematic reviews: accuracy and reliability of screening records. Stat Med. 2002 Jun 15;21(11):1635-40. doi: 10.1002/sim.1190. PMID: 12111924. 

Conventional vs. Automated or Semi-Automated Screening

Quite a bit of research is currently being done on automating steps of the systematic review process, particularly investigating using AI/machine learning or text mining/natural language processing to replace the second reviewer (ie. semi-automated screening) and/or to reduce the number of records needed to be screened. There are already software tools in existence that have introduced relevance prediction/screening prioritization capabilities (for example, Abstrackr, DistillerSR/DistillerAI, EPPI-Reviewer, RobotAnalyst, etc.) but their performance is largely still under evaluation.

As technology improves, it’s highly likely that we will someday soon see acceptance of automated screening tool use for study selection in systematic reviews by leaders in the evidence synthesis field, but we are still far from there yet.  Progress in this area is already being made, however, as demonstrated by the creation and efforts of the International Collaboration for the Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR):

Beller E, Clark J, Tsafnat G, Adams C, Diehl H, Lund H, Ouzzani M, Thayer K, Thomas J, Turner T, Xia J, Robinson K, Glasziou P; founding members of the ICASR group. Making progress with the automation of systematic reviews: principles of the International Collaboration for the Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR). Syst Rev. 2018 May 19;7(1):77. doi: 10.1186/s13643-018-0740-7. PMID: 29778096; PMCID: PMC5960503.

O’Connor AM, Glasziou P, Taylor M, Thomas J, Spijker R, Wolfe MS. A focus on cross-purpose tools, automated recognition of study design in multiple disciplines, and evaluation of automation tools: a summary of significant discussions at the fourth meeting of the International Collaboration for Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR). Syst Rev. 2020 May 4;9(1):100. doi: 10.1186/s13643-020-01351-4. PMID: 32366302; PMCID: PMC7199360.

Be sure to check out the MSK Library’s Systematic Review Service LibGuide or Ask Us for more information if you are thinking about embarking on a systematic review project.