Search Help: Search Basics; Types of Searches; Results; Content

NEJM - Search Help

When looking for an article in NEJM Search, a specific search strategy is more likely to return the relevant article(s) of interest. For best results enter the minimum amount of information, such as volume/page number, authors, and/or specific search terms, to uniquely identify the article or articles.

Search Basics

Here are some tips to help you maximize the effectiveness of your search:

Search terms - NEJM search will find articles containing all of the terms entered in the search box. If more than one search term is used, a link to expand your search to find articles with some of the terms in the results list appears on the last page of the search results.
Phrases - Enclosing a phrase in quotations (“”) will narrow the results to just the desired phrase. For example, entering “left atrial” will return documents containing only that exact phrase.
Author names - To view NEJM articles prioritized by a particular author, enter the first initial and full last name (e.g., J. Smith, or Solomon, S.).
Citations - To quickly access any NEJM article, enter the article citation in the search box. The article citation includes both the volume number and the article pages, separated by a colon (e.g., 355:2226-2235).
Spell check - Search terms are checked against a dictionary that includes all terms in the Journal, as well as author names. Enhance your search results by using the "wildcard" (*) if you are unsure of spelling or are using a fragmented word. For example, a search for child* will return articles containing child, childcare, and children; likewise, a search for phospha* will return articles containing phosphatase and phosphate.
Punctuation - Pay particular attention to terms containing hyphens, periods, or other punctuation. NEJM Search will ignore punctuation; letters or numbers separated by punctuation are treated as separate words. For example search IL-4 with "il-4" or "il 4" (with a space), but not with il4 (without a space).

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Types of Searches

A NEJM search can be customized to return articles whose relevance more precisely match your needs, sorted by Most Relevant and Most Recent (see Results below).

Author Search

A NEJM search using the author's name as the search term will return the articles written by that author. To view NEJM articles prioritized by a particular author, enter the last name followed by the first initial. Note that the initial is optional, though middle initials can be included as well as follows:

Smith, JM
Smith, J
Smith JM
J Smith

Article Type Search

You can run a NEJM search for a specific article type by adding the name of the article type to your search term. For example, search for diabetes mellitus editorial to view results with the term diabetes mellitus and article type editorial at the top of the results list.

There are multiple NEJM Article Types in a Content Type category. To help you narrow your search by article types, view a complete listing of Content Types and their corresponding NEJM Article Types.

Content Type	Article Type
Research	Original Articles Brief Reports Special Articles Special Reports
Reviews	Clinical Practice Clinical Therapeutics Videos in Clinical Medicine Current Concepts Drug Therapy Mechanisms of Disease Medical Progress (as well as previously-published series such as Primary Care, Advances in Immunology, Molecular Medicine, etc.)
Perspective	Perspective (including subtypes such as Behind the Research, Becoming a Physician, etc.)
Commentary	Editorials Shattuck Lecture Sounding Board Clinical Debate Clinical Decisions Clinical Implications of Basic Research Health Policy Report Health Law Ethics and Human Rights Retraction Expression of Concern Removal of Expression of Concern
Images	Images in Clinical Medicine articles of any type with whose figure legend text matches the search criteria
Case Materials	Case Records of the MGH Clinical Problem-Solving
Other	Occasional Notes Correspondence Book Reviews Corrections Normal Reference Laboratory Values

Citation Search

Using the actual NEJM citation will uniquely identify and take you directly to the article. The volume number and start page (e.g., 348:2057) are required for a citation search. Following are examples of other formats that are acceptable for citation searches:

348:2057
5/22/2003, p 2057
348:2057-8
2003; 348: 2057-2058
348/21/2057
348-21-2057
Volume 348:2057-2058
N Engl J Med 2003 May 22;348(21):2057-8

Phrase Search

A NEJM search for a group of words will return results for each of the words unless otherwise specified. One way to connect two words is by enclosing them in quotation marks. For example, entering “left atrial” will return documents containing only that whole phrase, not documents containing one of the two terms.

Using Operators

You can create and execute NEJM searches with more than two search terms that use the operators OR, AND, NOT. Along with these operators, you can use parentheses to further clarify your search statement.

Example 1. human AND diseases
If you enter this query, you will retrieve only articles that mention both human and diseases.

Example 2. antiplatelet NOT aspirin
This query would search for articles about antiplatelet that did not mention aspirin

Using Wildcards

The wildcard character (*) matches any number of characters. That means that you can use it as a placeholder for any sequence of letters or symbols. For example, a search for child* will return articles containing child, childcare, and children. Likewise, a search for phospha* will return articles containing phosphatase and phosphate.

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Results

Your search results are displayed in a number of different ways and can be manipulated to fine tune your query to more precisely retrieve relevant articles.

Display

A NEJM search will return results in the Most Relevant category by default. You can re-sort the results by Most Recent by clicking the Most Recent link within the results set.

Several options to further narrow or expand your search are available, including:

Limit by Category - You can choose to see all results for the search by selecting Most Relevant or Most Recent. The total number of available articles appears next to each category. See below for a description of result sorting options.
Limit by Content Type - You can choose a subset of results in each of the “Content Types” categories: Research, Reviews, Perspective, Commentary, Images, Case Materials and Other. The total number of available articles appears next to each content type category.
Content Selection - Click the Full Text, CME, or Medline link to execute the search on a different set of content. Read more about Content options.
Feedback - Tell us what you think by selecting the “Did you find this search useful” links beneath the search box.
Limit by Date - You can change the date parameters of your search.
Save Search - If you are a registered user or subscriber, you can save your searches to be re-run at a later time.
Feed Search Results - You can subscribe to a web feed of the search results. The web feed is a function that will notify you when any new articles appear that match your search criteria.
Pagination - You can quickly page through search results using previous or next navigation links, or choose to directly access a page.
Sort Results - Search results can be sorted by Most Relevant and Most Recent. See below for a description of result sorting options
Related searches - You can see the searches performed by previous users who have also chosen the article of interest to you.

Sorting Options

There are two options for sorting results:

Most Relevant - Your search results are sorted using a relevancy algorithm that determines those articles with the search term in the title of the article, listing those above articles with the search term in the abstract. Articles with the search term in the abstract appear above those with search terms in the full text. Original and research articles appear before book reviews and letters.
Most Recent - Your search results are sorted in reverse chronological order.

Date filter

A NEJM search result set lists articles published from 10 years prior to the current month of the current year. To filter the result set of articles published during a particular time period, you can adjust the date filters accordingly and re-run the search.

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Content

You can perform a NEJM Search that is focused on specific content areas. These kinds of searches will produce results that vary according to the content being searched.

Articles

A NEJM search for Articles includes NEJM articles in full text dating from 1993 to the present. Future versions of NEJM search will include articles dating back to 1966.

Images

A NEJM search for Images includes images appearing in NEJM dating from 1997 to the present. All images are available in PowerPoint-compatible slides.

CME

This full-text NEJM search returns relevant continuing medical education (CME) articles and exams. It is limited to articles identified as part of NEJM's Weekly CME Program (NEJM articles published before 2005 do not have associated Weekly CME Exams).

Medline

The Medline database of over 15 million references to articles published in more than 5,000 current biomedical journals from the United States and over 80 foreign countries retrieves articles from 1966 to the present, updated nightly with linked abstracts.

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