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MeSH Tree icon and banner saying New Headings for 2024

Each year the indexing team at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) updates descriptors and makes new headings available for searching in PubMed, MEDLINE, and other NLM databases. The 2024 changes were applied in December 2023. You can see new descriptors and changed descriptors on the NLM site.

There were changes to headings for Influenzavirus A (now Alphainfluenzavirus) and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (three new entry terms for Chimpanzee Coryza Agent, Orthopneumovirus, and RSV Respiratory Syncytial Virus that will map to the heading when searching). Voting became a new MeSH heading. And there was a large expansion of terms available for concepts related to Psychological Stress - 54 to be precise! For example, you can now explode Coping Skills to cover nine concepts including Behavioral Coping and Cognitive Coping.

Other new terms include some coming out of the pandemic (immune system exhaustion, mental health teletherapy, pandemic preparedness, unvaccinated persons), some that are DEI-related (deaf culture, disability discrimination, social genomics, and undertreatment), and others that invite a visit to the scope note to see what they are all about (flighted spongy moth complex?)

Changes and new headings are not retrospective. For example, if searching for Influenzavirus A you will need to search the new Alphainfluenzavirus heading and the previous Influenzavirus A heading to get both new and older publications. To search for Voting prior to 2024 you may want to consider using the broader heading Politics which the concept was included under previously. 

For precision searching with MeSH headings, NLM encourages you to consult the MeSH Browser for scope notes and other information about a term. It can guide you to the right headings, subheadings (see the Qualifiers tab), and entry terms. Entry terms function like cross references so searching RSV will include the publications indexed for Respiratory Syncytial Virus since it’s an entry term for that heading. If you don’t want entry or mapped terms to be included, use double quotes to limit your search to just that precise heading.

NNLM will be offering a free webinar on MeSH Changes and PubMed Searching on January 25th from 1 to 2:30pm. You’ll hear more about the changes and have an opportunity to practice searching in PubMed. The class is available for beginner through advanced searchers.

The Read by QxMD app and website provide a personal awareness service for health sciences professionals, making it easier to keep up with published research. Users create a free account login, enter their profession and specialty, and the service uses an algorithm to deliver a feed of recommended articles. Articles with high levels of interaction and views appear higher in the feed. Like a streaming music service, the more you read, like, and save on Read, the more tailored your feed becomes.

Featured feed screen from Read by QxMD

Users can save articles to collections that can be shared with colleagues or used for research projects, journal clubs, or other purposes. Users can also choose to follow curated collections or a particular journal and get regular push notifications when items are added. My Keywords allows users to enter a set of keywords and be alerted when a new resource that’s a match is added. The content source for QxMD is PubMed. New materials become available as they are added to the PubMed service.

Collections screen from Read by QxMD

It’s easy to access full-text of articles in the form of PDFs in Read. Many articles are open access. Himmelfarb Library is now updating library holdings with QxMD. GW users can now indicate their affiliation and access the library’s full-text collection. Downloaded PDFs are saved to the user’s device.

Read users with the mobile app can earn up to 20 CME credits for reading articles on the app. 

The Read app is available for iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and smartphones. Read can also be accessed on your workstation via a browser.

NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) logo

Do you login to PubMed via NCBI to use MyNCBI to save searches and alerts, or SciENcv to create and maintain an NIH Biosketch, or MyBibliography to save citations? In January, 2021 the NIH released a Technical Bulletin informing PubMed users that NCBI-managed account credentials are going away, and after June 1, 2021 users should sign into NCBI via PubMed using a federated account such as your NetID, eRA Commons, or ORCiD account login credentials.

Watch this short video by Himmelfarb Librarian Paul Levett that explains how to link an NCBI account with federated account credentials.

screenshot of new PubMed home page

The new PubMed is here! Himmelfarb previously announced a transition from PubMed’s old interface to their newer, more modern interface. As of May 18th, the NLM will fully transition to the new PubMed interface with a host of new features, available on mobile and desktop devices alike.

The new PubMed interface includes quality of life updates, like abstract excerpts available in the results list and updates to the interface to make the site more navigable, and as well as significant behind-the-scenes updates, including the algorithm that produces the new Best Match sort order. Additionally, your My NCBI saved searches and collections will continue to work with the new PubMed, so no starting over from scratch!

When accessing the new PubMed, be sure to go through the link on Himmelfarb’s home page, in the “Popular Resources” box, to ensure Himmelfarb’s full-text links and other customizations load. The new PubMed also offers full integration with our LibKey Nomad browser plugin (available on Google Chrome), which enhances  full-text linking by directly loading a PDF if one is available!

The NLM has a number of resources to help you familiarize yourself with the new PubMed interface. Their New PubMed Transition FAQ broadly covers the changes and updates made. The New PubMed Trainer’s Toolkit consists of short videos (1-4 minutes each), slides, handouts, and webinars that can be embedded in Blackboard courses. For those of you looking for a deeper dive into the new PubMed, the webinar series How PubMed Works does a deep dive into what PubMed is and how it functions. The PubMed User Guide is also readily available, with an in-depth coverage of frequently asked questions and instructions on how to use the various features the new PubMed offers.

Of course, we here at Himmelfarb are also available as a resource. We’ve been familiarizing ourselves with the new interface, and are happy to answer any questions you may have about the new PubMed. Email us at himmelfarb@gwu.edu, or chat with us via our Ask A Librarian instant messaging service.