Question

How do I search in a specific field, like the Title or Text Word field, for an exact phrase?

You can narrow a search to a specific field by tagging the phrase with the appropriate search tag. You don’t need to add any other punctuation, like double quotes, when you use a tag. View a complete list of search tags in the PubMed Help Guide.

Tagging a phrase with a search tag will bypass Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) and look for the phrase only in the field indicated.

For example, a search for healthy brain study[ti] will retrieve citations with the phrase healthy brain study in the title.

If the phrase is not in the index for that field, PubMed will split the phrase apart and process each term individually. The search tag will apply only to the individual term it is attached to. For example, a search for standing desk injury[ti] is searched as:

Notice that only the term injury was searched in the Title field, and the other terms were processed with ATM.