Cancer Research Citation Search Tips

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The Cancer Research Citation Search allows you to search for scientific articles authored or coauthored by researchers from CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control (DCPC) starting in 2000. The articles themselves are not stored in the search tool; rather, citation titles are linked to the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed database or CDC’s journals Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) and Preventing Chronic Disease. If available, a digital object identifier (DOI) link is also provided.

The following tips will help you use the search tool.

Selecting the Search Criteria

If you leave all fields empty and click Search, you will retrieve the entire list of articles.

Keywords

Use the Keywords field to search for specific words in the title of the article.

  • Match any word: Select this option to retrieve articles that contain any of the words in the Keywords field in the article title. For example, if you type “prostate cancer” in the Keywords field using this option, you will retrieve all articles containing either “prostate” or “cancer” in the title—which would be most of the articles.
  • Exact match: Select this option to retrieve articles that contain the exact phrase in the Keywords field in the article title. For example, if you type “prostate cancer” in the Keywords field using this option, you will retrieve all articles containing the phrase “prostate cancer” in the title, but not articles containing “cancer of the prostate” in the title.
  • Match all words: Select this option to retrieve articles that contain all of the words in the Keywords field in the article title. For example, if you type “prostate cancer” in the Keyword field using this option, you will retrieve all articles containing both “prostate” and “cancer” in the title.

Author Last Name

Use this field to search for articles by a particular author. Note that since many articles are collaborations between researchers from DCPC and other institutions, the author may not be a DCPC researcher.

DCPC First Authors

Check the DCPC first authors checkbox to retrieve only articles that were first-authored by DCPC researchers.

Topic/Category

Each article is assigned to one or more categories manually when the citation is entered into the tool. To retrieve articles that have been assigned to one or more categories, click the checkboxes corresponding to the categories you want.

If you select multiple categories, you will retrieve a list of articles that have been assigned to all of the categories you selected. For example, if you select both the Breast Cancer and Health Disparities in Cancer categories, you will retrieve a few articles about breast cancer in African-American women. If an article doesn’t fit in any category, it is assigned to the Other Research category.

Journal Name

Use this field to search for articles that were published in a particular journal.

Publication/Calendar Year Between

Use these two fields to select a beginning and ending calendar year of publication. For example, if you want to retrieve articles that were published between 2021 and 2023, select 2021 from the first dropdown list and 2023 from the second dropdown list. If you want to retrieve articles published during one year, select that year from both dropdown lists. For example, if you select 2023 from both dropdown lists, you will retrieve articles published in 2023.

Fiscal Year Between

Use these two fields to select a beginning and ending fiscal year of publication. CDC’s fiscal years begin October 1 and end September 30; for example, fiscal year 2023 began October 1, 2022 and ends September 30, 2023. See the instructions above for more information.

Note that you can include either calendar years or fiscal years in your search criteria, but not both.

When you have entered all of your search criteria, click the Search button. The list of results appears.

Viewing and Printing the List of Results

Sorting the Search Results

When you have retrieved your results, the default sort order is ascending alphabetical (A to Z) by article title. You can sort the results in different ways by clicking on the column titles. The default sort order is ascending (A to Z, 1 to 9). To sort the column in descending order (Z to A, 9 to 1), click the down arrow in the column title.

Please note that if you choose to sort the list by the Author column, the list is sorted alphabetically by the first author.

Setting the Number of Search Results to View per Page

By default, 25 results are shown on each page of the list. To increase the number of results to show on each page, select the desired number from the Results per page dropdown list located above the Title column and the number of results will increase.

Printing the Search Results

From the Results per page dropdown list, select All. Then, do one of the following—

  1. Press Ctrl + P on your keyboard, or;
  2. If your browser does not show the menu bar on top, choose the three dots on the top right (horizontal dots on Edge; vertical dots on Chrome), which will show a menu bar. There, press Print and follow the printing instructions on the Print pop-up box.

Accessing and Reading an Article

To read an article in the search results list—

  • Click on the title. A new browser window will open and show either the abstract of the article (if available) in PubMed, or the full text of the article in MMWR or Preventing Chronic Disease. The PubMed abstract will include links (if available) to the full text of the article; however, many journals charge a fee to access the full text.
  • Click on the DOI (if available). A new browser window will open and show the article in a journal.