This search mode will assist you in looking for items or concepts that
may be present in common between two distinct sets of
articles. Another context for using this search mode is when you
want to find information that is present in one field that
may be relevant to another field of inquiry. You will be guided through two PubMed searches to retrieve biomedical articles from the
Medline database: the first search defines "literature A" and the second
defines "literature C." The program then generates a "B-list" of words and
phrases found in the titles of both literatures.
The B-list can be edited further by selecting only certain semantic
categories (e.g. anatomical regions, or disorders, or drugs), by adjusting
frequency thresholds (e.g., one can select only B-terms that appear in more than one
paper in each literature), by adjusting first publication date thresholds (e.g., one can select B-terms that first appeared in the A or C literature within the last 2 years), or by manual selection of terms. Finally, for
each B-term of interest, one can view the titles containing A and B ("AB
titles") juxtaposed to the titles containing B and C ("BC titles"). In
this manner, one can readily assess whether there appears to be a
biologically significant commonality or relationship between the two sets of
articles.