Discussion

Does PubMed search full-text? 📑.

No, PubMed does not search in full-text search. If you want to search full-text you should go to PubMed Central or PapersHive.

Matteo Ghetti

• 2 min read
Does PubMed search full-text? 📑

This is one of the most misleading topics that we have faced when talking to practitioners and researchers: PubMed does not search full-text.

To get full-text articles you should go to: PubMed Central or PapersHive.

🧐 Why do you believe PubMed searches full-text?  

Probably because of the PubMed filters:

Taken from PubMed itself: "The PubMed database contains more than 35 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not include full text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC)." [source]

Filters such as "Free full text" and "Full text" just limit the search only to citations that include a link to the full-text article”.

Let's run an experiment!

PMID 35743256 is a full-text article. It contains the word “cholesterol”in the full-text.

  1. It is on PubMed Central
This is what we find in PubMed Central when searching for "cholesterol" AND the PMID.

2. On PubMed you won't find it.

The same search will not work on PubMed.

3. Not even with the Full-text filters.

Even when applying the full-text filters. The article will not be retrieved.

To conclude

  1. PubMed does not search full-text search.
  2. Include PubMed Central and re-run all your searches.
  3. Or use a search engine with full-text capabilities such as PapersHive.

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