Training New PubMed (EN): 6. Reference management

You can save the results of  your search strategy in PubMed.

You can save your search strategy in PubMed to be alerted of new relevant literature.

You can export your results to a reference management system (for example Endnote or Mendeley). 

Check the LibGuide  Reference Management  if you want to know more about reference management.

We recommend that you save your search history. In this way you can justify yourself at a later stage. You can save your search in 'Search History' via the Print Screen button of your browser, or copy the results to a text file.

If you view the results of a search you will see on the right-hand side of the search screen the options 'Create RSS' and 'Create alert'.

You can use these options to respectively generate an RSS feed of the search or save the search in an MyNCBI account. Such an account helps you repeat  your search(es) at a later stage, or have yourself alerted to new articles on this subject.

If you do not have an MyNCBI account yet, you will be asked to create a (free) account  the first time you use the 'Create alert' option.

You can also save the search results in PubMed. In the results list you can select hits by ticking the box to the left of the number. (NB: if you leave all boxes unticked, all found references are automatically included!). Via the link 'Send to' at the top of the results list you can save the selected hits on the Clipboard to view them later. The contents of the Clipboard will be saved for eight hours.

To save your search results permanently, you can store them in MyNCBI. Select in the menu 'Send to' at the top of the list of results for the option 'Collections'.

MyNCBI opens automatically.

However, if you want to export your results to a literature management program, click on 'Citation Manager' in this screen.

You can export your search results to a program for reference management. In such a program your references will be collected in a well-organised manner (especially useful if your references come from several search engines). You can arrange references, remove duplicates, and when writing your article you can easily include citations and create a bibliography.

Utrecht University Library supports the use of RefWorks. This program is online available and free for all Utrecht University students and staff.

RefWorks
This program can be found at de Library's homepage  via 'Search engines' >'Alphabetical list of search engines''.  In order to make use of RefWorks you must create an account first. This can be done on all Utrecht University computers. We recommend the LibGuide  RefWorks if you want to find out more about this reference management tool. In this LibGuide you will find how to export references.