How PubMed Works: Automatic Term Mapping (ATM)

How PubMed Works: Automatic Term Mapping is an engaging and practical training session designed to enhance your understanding of PubMed's inner workings. These materials are used for a 90-minute webinar providing an in-depth examination of Automatic Term Mapping (ATM), PubMed’s behind-the-scenes process for interpreting your keyword search terms.

This training includes a mix of live demonstrations, hands-on exercises, and practical search tips from the National Library of Medicine. Key topics include the ATM keyword translation process, leveraging the Subject, Journals, and Author Name tables, phrase searching, finding ‘your’ author, and strategies for refining searches when ATM doesn’t deliver expected results. Content last updated November 2025.

This resource is supported by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH) under cooperative agreement number UG4LM013732 with the University of Utah’s Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

If you have any questions, please reach out to nto@nnlm.gov.