Research Tools: PubMed Now Offers Relevance Sort Option
The relevance sort option was first announced “as coming soon” about 5 weeks ago. It went live today.
From the NLM Technical Bulletin:
The “Relevance” sort option [is] available from the “Display Settings” menu under the “Sort by” selections.
The relevance sort order for search results is based on an algorithm that analyzes each PubMed citation that includes the search terms. For each search query, “weight” is calculated for citations depending on how many search terms are found and in which fields they are found. In addition, recently-published articles are given a somewhat higher weight for sorting.
Easy access to the relevance sort will also initially be provided under a “New feature” discovery tool
Users may either choose “Relevance” from the “Display Settings Sort by” menu or click the “Sort by Relevance” link in the New Feature discovery tool.
Results for My NCBI users that are signed in with a modified default sort order will continue to display in the modified order until a different sort order is selected. A Relevance default sort selection in My NCBI PubMed Preferences will be added after the initial implementation of this new feature.
Read the Complete Announcement Along With Some Useful Screen Caps
Filed under: News, Patrons and Users

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.