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pubmed-api

Search biomedical literature and retrieve records via PubMed E-utilities

skills/literature/search/pubmed-api/SKILL.md

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# PubMed E-utilities API Guide

## Overview

PubMed is the premier biomedical literature database maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the US National Library of Medicine. It indexes over 36 million citations and abstracts from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. The Entrez Programming Utilities (E-utilities) provide programmatic access to the entire PubMed database and other NCBI databases.

E-utilities consist of a suite of server-side programs that accept URL-based requests and return structured data. These tools are essential for biomedical researchers, systematic reviewers, and developers building health informatics applications. The API supports complex search queries using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms, boolean operators, and field-specific searches.

The API is free and does not require authentication for basic usage. Registering for an NCBI API key raises the rate limit from 3 to 10 requests per second, which is recommended for any automated workflow.

## Authentication

No authentication required for basic usage (3 requests/second). For higher rate limits (10 requests/second), register for a free API key at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/account/ and include it in requests: