My PubMed Search Documentation Was a Mess - Here's What I Learned

It's not that I didn't record my PubMed search results. I did. But I didn't do it thoroughly. I didn't do it systematically. It was very drafty.

I was a medical student writing my first (and so far only) review article. I knew I should keep track of things. So I did. Sort of.

Scattered Across Multiple Files

By the time I needed to verify my search documentation, I had already copied so much stuff. I already had a few files for all the articles. And I didn't do any of this in an organized way.

Some notes were in one document. Some in another. Some search terms were recorded somewhere, but the result counts? Maybe in a different file. Or maybe I wrote them down but not consistently.

It was a mess.

Backtracking Through Everything

When it came time to properly document my methodology, I had to backtrack my steps. I had to search through my files trying to find what I had recorded.

Then I had to do new searches to confirm the numbers I had found previously. Were these the right result counts? Did I record them correctly? Was this the exact search term I used?

And I had to make sure no new articles had come out since then. Because PubMed is constantly updated. If I ran the same search weeks later, the numbers might be different. So I had to verify that my original numbers still made sense.

All of this backtracking took time. Time I should have spent on the actual science.

Why This Matters for Reviews

Systematic reviews and literature reviews have standards. PRISMA guidelines, for example, require you to document your search strategy in detail. This includes:

• The databases you searched
• The search terms and queries
• The number of results from each search
• The date of each search

If you don't record this information properly as you go, you end up like me - backtracking through scattered files, redoing searches, trying to piece together what you did months ago.

I'm a Physician. I Need Things Organized.

I'm a physician now. I was a medical student when I wrote that review. I had so much to study. I didn't have time to be super organized with my search documentation while also doing the actual review.

The tools should help you stay organized automatically. You shouldn't have to think about file organization while you're trying to focus on the science.

So I Fixed It

When I built LitRevs, automatic and thorough search documentation was essential.

When you search PubMed from the app, it takes a snapshot of that moment in time. The search terms. The number of results. The date. All the PubMed IDs of the articles returned. Everything is captured automatically.

If you ever have any doubt about your searches, everything is right there. You don't have to search through scattered files. You don't have to backtrack. You don't have to redo searches to confirm your numbers.

All the things you would normally have to painstakingly copy and paste and organize in some file - they're already there, organized for you.

If This Sounds Familiar

If you've ever had messy documentation scattered across multiple files, or had to backtrack through your own notes, or rerun searches to verify your numbers, or worried about whether new articles had been published since your original search - you're not alone.

This was one of the frustrations that made me build LitRevs.