As previously announced, the National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is taking steps to modernize the PubMed Central® (PMC) website. The current step is to update the PMC search functionality and user experience. In preparation for transitioning to an updated search later this year, PMC released a beta version in April for searchers to preview and test. We have already made some incremental improvements based on user comments and invite you to continue to provide feedback.

How is PMC Beta Search Different?

• PMC Beta search has an updated look and feel that is more mobile-friendly and consistent with the rest of the PMC website. It also incorporates some popular search features from PubMed, such as the Results Timeline.
• The update transitions PMC search to a more modern search platform which provides users with more robust search functionality and accurate results including:
• Easy discovery of articles by searching on a title or basic citation data.
• Proximity searching on the full text.
• Targeted searches for terms and datasets in data availability statements.
• Updated searching with truncated terms and wildcards.
• A refined set of filters and search fields.
• PMC Beta Search also includes journal content not previously discoverable through search in PMC. Most notably, this includes non-article content such as mastheads and advertisements from NLM's Biomedical Journal Digitization Projects. These items will now be returned as individual search results.

Please note: PMC Beta Search fully represents the initial set of features that will be launched to the main PMC website later this year. PMC will continue to make additions and improvements to the new search after launch, prioritized based on user feedback.

Share your feedback

We invite you to try out the beta version of the updated PMC search by clicking the link under the search bar on the PMC website (Figure 1). You can submit your feedback by using the "Provide Feedback" button (Figure 2). Visit the PMC Beta Search user guide for general guidance on the updated search.

Figure 1: Enter a search and click link to try PMC Beta Search.

Figure 2: Provide feedback by clicking the feedback button on PMC Beta Search site.

Questions?

Please reach out to us if you have questions or would like to provide feedback.

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PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) NLM. Learn more here.