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Create & customize a My NCBI account

This guide will walk you through the steps to create a My NCBI account to save searches, citations, and other items. It will also walk through the steps to customize your account so you never hit a paywall again when searching PubMed.

Is this necessary?

Why create a My NCBI account?

A My NCBI account allows you expanded functionality in PubMed.

  1. You can customize the account to improve access to full text of articles WITHOUT hitting a paywall!
    • Pitt has an incredible collection of subscription-based journals. You will find, if not all, the majority of the items you want using PittCat.
    • Link to PittCat, the discovery system used by all libraries at Pitt, to search for articles not available online for free through an open access publisher or PubMed Central.
      • If an item is not found in PittCat
        • Turn on Expand to Non-Pitt Resources (left side menu at the top).
        • Sign in using your Pitt Passport information.
        • Request a (free) copy of a scan through the HSLS Document Delivery service.
      • Never again not use an article because it isn't free.
  2. You can save PubMed searches and receive automatic updates when new items are added to PubMed that match your search.
  3. You can share a collection of items on a topic.
    • This is great for collaboration.
  4. You can create a bibliography of your publications to add to your CV.
  5. The account is portable- you can take it with you if/when you leave the University.
    • You will need to modify your Account Settings if you used Pitt Passport for authentication.

The account you have created is with NCBI, not Pitt

Even if you use Pitt Passport to authenticate, the account is being set up with NCBI. If something happens and you cannot login to search PubMed but you can access other resources requiring a Pitt Passport authentication, the problem is most likely with NCBI. Use Ask A Librarian to verify the problem is at NCBI. All of the librarians have accounts so we can use ours to test NCBI.