Objective 4a: Keyword Search for Un-indexed Records (search 2)

Search 2 in the required template for your group projects is a keyword search for unindexed PubMed records (non-MEDLINE PubMed records).   These are records for articles from journals not indexed by MEDLINE.  These articles are represented by records in PubMed because the full-text versions have been deposited in PubMed Central.

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Why run this search? 

Often a fourth of the articles retrieved by a keyword search are unindexed. These records can’t be retrieved by a MeSH search.

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Prepare for the search:

Because this is a search for unindexed records, you will have to remove any limits except language, publication date, and systematic review limits that you applied earlier.   (There is no reason to apply a publication date limit or systematic review limit to search 2.). It’s usually easiest to clear all the previous limits/filters and reapply the English filter.

Click the “Clear all” link to remove applied filters from this next search.  On the “Advanced” search page , the “clear all” link is present  above the search boxes.  On the PubMed results page, the  “clear all” link is present in the space below the search box and above the results list.

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Run the search:

• Remove anything that is currently in the PubMed search box and paste your keyword search strategy in the search box.
• Run the search and apply an English language filter (if desired).  Remember, even un-indexed records contain language information.
• At the end of your search strategy, type a space, followed by — NOT MEDLINE[sb]  .  The [sb] is the subset tag.  The — NOT MEDLINE[sb] — will remove all the PubMed records that are part of the indexed (MEDLINE) subset from your results.

• Hit the “Search” button.
• As mentioned earlier, you may add an English filter to this search.
• This version of the tutorial search retrieved 78 results when the tutorial was last updated in June 2025.

If you are using this tutorial to guide your group project search and have a lot of search results, do not be discouraged! You just have to scan the titles and abstracts retrieved by this search for articles that meet your formulary project’s inclusion criteria.  You do not need to read the full-text versions of all the review articles, editorials, and irrelevant trials that have been identified.  Just the full-text versions of the relevant studies.  

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Document the search:

• Click the “Advanced” link under the PubMed search box to go to the “Advanced” search page.
• Find the row in the “History and Search Details” table that ends with  NOT MEDLINE[sb]
• Click the “Ellipsis” icon (…) in that row and select the “Add Query” option that appears
• Scroll up to the search box and copy its contents.
• Paste the copied search under the heading for search 2.
• If you wish, note the number of results on the line below the search strategy.