MEDSUM Tutorial page


Quick call Timeline MeSH It PROFILE

  •       Quick Call
    The purpose of the Quick Call button is simply to tell you:
          1) how PubMed interprets what you just wrote and
          2) how many records there are associated with that query.

    The query should normally take under 2 seconds to process.


    Why use Quick Call? In a standard PubMed search, it may not be so critical to get your search term 100% accurate if you are just looking for interesting papers, but if you are using MEDSUM to profile fields of research for the sake of a review paper, then you need to check that your search term is being interpreted correctly.

  •       Timeline
    The Timeline button takes your query and first counts all associated records (publications) between 1945 and the current year. It then breaks down that total count year by year, starting with the current year and working backwards. Timeline stops when it runs out of records or when it hits 1945. Each year should take as long as a Quick Call - i.e. between 0 and 2 seconds.

    Although the PROFILE button will also give you a breakdown over years as part of its information set, Timeline is much faster for larger number of records (approx > 1,000 or 2,000) and not limited by number of records (PROFILE is currently limited to 10,000 records).


  •       MeSH It
    The purpose of the MeSH It button is to take your query and convert it into Major Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms. To do this, it calls up and downloads the most recent 1000 papers coded into MEDLINE (i.e. with MeSH terms) and counts up the occurrences of each Major MeSH heading. It then returns these to you ranked by frequency. MeSH It usually takes between 20 and 60 seconds to run.



  •       PROFILE
    The PROFILE button is often the most fun of the four MEDSUM buttons. Its most common use is for exploring the publication history and biases of an individual researcher or a journal. However, it can also be used to explore subject areas very thoroughly. Each of these areas; authors, journals and subjects have their own tips and tricks associated with them, so they will be dealt with separately.

    Very generally, PROFILE downloads the full MEDLINE versions of all papers called by the query (title, abstract, authors, MeSH terms, everything). As PubMed E-Utilities requests that you download a maximum of 500 records at a time with 3-second delays between each batch, the PROFILE button currently limits itself to the first 10,000 records (previously was 1,500). This easily covers all author profiles, all journal profiles, but only some subject profiles.