Searching Scientific Literature
Searching Scientific Literature
Overview
Search PubMed for scientific literature using optimized queries. Extract metadata and prepare papers for relevance evaluation.
Core principle: Cast a wide enough net to find relevant papers, but use targeted keywords to keep results manageable.
When to Use
Use this skill when:
- Starting a new research question
- User asks "find papers about..."
- Need initial paper set for evaluation
- Searching for specific methods, compounds, diseases, techniques
Search Strategy
1. Parse User Query
More from kthorn/research-superpower
getting started with research superpowers
Introduction to literature search & review skills - systematic paper finding, screening, extraction, and citation traversal
91subagent-driven literature review
Use parallel subagents for large-scale paper screening and deep dive analysis
2checking chembl for structured sar data
Check if medicinal chemistry papers are in ChEMBL database to access curated bioactivity data
2finding open access papers
Use Unpaywall API to find free full-text versions of paywalled papers
2cleaning up research sessions
Safely remove intermediate files from completed research sessions while preserving important data
2answering research questions
Main orchestration workflow for systematic literature research - search, evaluate, traverse, synthesize
2