Searching Europe PMC

One search portal for all content

Europe PMC combines the functions of PubMed and PubMed Central, allowing you to search through both abstract and full text biomedical content in the same portal.

Any keyword of interest can be entered in the search box at the top of the page. The example in Figure 2 shows that the keyword ‘zebrafish’ was entered.

Let’s explore the results page for ‘zebrafish’. Click on the  to explore options for filtering your search results.

Figure 2 Search results page for ‘zebrafish’.

When there is a full text version of the record available in Europe PMC, the words ‘Free full text in Europe PMC’ are displayed on the record retrieved.

You have the option to further refine the search using the different content filters on the left-hand side. You can use the ‘Free full text access’ filters to only view ‘Full text in Europe PMC’ which returns all articles that are freely available to read within Europe PMC or the ‘Link to free full text’ filter which returns all articles with a known link to a free and legal copy of the full text, but the full text is not available to read within Europe PMC. In the same way, you can use the ‘Type’ filter to choose to only view research articles, review articles, preprints, or Books & documents. Another filter you could use is the ‘Date’ filter option, which allows you to select articles published in a specific year or custom date range. 

Tip: the Advanced Search (accessed via the link next to the main search button) provides many useful features designed to help you find what you are looking for.

Sort options

Europe PMC results can be sorted by relevance (the default option), the number of times the records have been cited, and the publication date.

Let’s look at the results for ‘fog-1’. Click on the  for more information on sorting options.

Figure 3 Search results for ‘fog-1’, sorted by ‘Relevance’ is shown. The search can be sorted also by ‘Times cited’ and ‘Date’. The most highly cited articles are displayed in descending (recent) order. Results ordered by publication date can be displayed in either descending (recent) or ascending (oldest) order.