Life Science Encyclopedia

PMID is an acronym for PubMed Identifier or more specifically PubMed Unique Identifier which is a unique number assigned to each PubMed citation of life sciences and biomedical scientific journal articles. It is used similarly to the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for books.

As of 2005, there are roughly between 15-16 million numbers in use, starting from PMID 1, and about 1 million new numbers are added each year. Unique Identifier [UID] (PubMed Unique Identifier PMID) is the search field tag used in the PubMed search query.

By using the PMID as a search argument (with of without the [uid] field tag), the relevant abstract will be displayed by PubMed. Multiple PMIDs in one search will yield all abstracts (it is interpreted as an OR operation). PMID itself should not be included in the search.

Example: to search for Chobanian AV et al. The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure: the JNC 7 report. JAMA. 2003 May 21;289(19):2560-72. Epub 2003 May 14. PMID 12748199.

Go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed

Enter 12748199 in the search box.

To search in combination with other terms, one must enter the search field tag, e.g., smith [au] AND (10403340 [uid] OR vaccines [mh]).

You can also enter the PMID number in Entrez at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez

See also

• Unique identifier
• Digital object identifier (DOI)
• International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

References

• PubMed Help
• Creating a direct Web Link to the Entrez Databases