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MEDLINE®/PubMed® Resources Guide
Printer-friendly VersionThe following resources provide detailed information about MEDLINE® data and searching PubMed®. If you cannot find the information you seek, please contact NLM Customer Service.
News | Overviews | Journals | Data Structure & Variables | Data Policies | Searching PubMed
Tools & Utilities | MEDLINE Statistics | Help & Training Resources
Tools & Utilities | MEDLINE Statistics | Help & Training Resources
NEWS
| PubMed New and Noteworthy | List of changes to PubMed by date, with links to the Technical Bulletin. |
| PubMed Update Chart | Brief database statistics. From the Data, News and Update Information page that covers all NLM databases. |
| NLM Technical Bulletin | The NLM Technical Bulletin is your main source for detailed information about changes and updates to NLM resources, including MEDLINE and PubMed. |
| NLM-Announces | NLM e-mail list for announcing important information and changes to NLM systems including PubMed. |
| PubMed-Alerts | An announcements-only e-mail list that notifies subscribers of major system problems with PubMed; its two companion databases, MeSH and Journals; and the NLM Catalog (Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 5:00pm ET). |
OVERVIEWS
| MEDLINE Fact Sheet | A brief description of MEDLINE, your database of biomedical and life sciences journal citations. See also FAQ: Finding Medical Information in MEDLINE. |
| PubMed Fact Sheet | A brief description of PubMed, part of the Entrez retrieval system and your free access to MEDLINE. |
| What is the Difference between MEDLINE and PubMed?(Fact Sheet) | A useful fact sheet to help you understand MEDLINE and PubMed. |
| MeSH Fact Sheet | To help you understand NLM's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. Helpful for searching NLM's databases. See also The Basics of MeSH and Branching Out: The MeSH Vocabulary (instructional video). |
| Indexing FAQ | How indexing is done at NLM, and information on becoming an indexer. |
| Special Collaborative Arrangements | An explanation of NLM's special collaborative arrangements for selecting publications. |
| What is the Cochrane Collaboration? | An explanation of the collaboration created to improve clinical trials information in MEDLINE. |
| Reorganization of the NLM Databases (2002) | Where data from NLM's legacy databases went. See also FAQ: Retired Databases. |
JOURNALS
| MEDLINE Journal Selection (Fact Sheet) | How journals are selected for the MEDLINE database. See also the FAQ: Journal Selection for MEDLINE Indexing at NLM. |
| Journals Recently Accepted by NLM for Inclusion in MEDLINE | Those titles recently accepted by the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC). |
| List of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE | A list of currently indexed titles. |
| List of Journals Indexed for Online Users | A list of titles formerly and currently indexed in MEDLINE. |
| Journal Lists by FTP | PubMed and other Entrez journal lists available by file transfer protocol (ftp) in uncompressed, GNU zip, UNIX Compress, and PKZIP formats. |
| Number of Titles Currently Indexed | The number of journal titles currently indexed for MEDLINE in PubMed. |
| MEDLINE Journals Indexed from the Online Version | A list of journals indexed from the online version, with additional information on searching for online journals with LocatorPlus. |
| Journal and Citation Subsets | The table of subset codes assigned to MEDLINE citations. See also FAQ: Finding a List of Abridged Index Medicus or Index Medicus Journal Titles. |
| Journal Subject Terms | Subject Terms are assigned by NLM at the journal level to describe the journal's overall scope. These terms are also used for the Subject Listing in the NLM publication: List of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE. |
| Use of Journal Title Abbreviations in NLM Databases | An answer to the question, "Why does NLM still use journal title abbreviations rather than the full journal title in its citations?". See also Construction of National Library of Medicine Title Abbreviations. |
DATA STRUCTURE & VARIABLES
| Detailed Field/Data Element Descriptions | Descriptions of the fields in MEDLINE/PubMed records, with detailed historical information, when available. |
| MeSH Subheadings Table (from PubMed Help) | The MeSH subheadings and their abbreviations. See also the MeSH subheadings hierarchy. |
| PubMed Publication Types (from PubMed Help) | The publication types used in MEDLINE/PubMed. See also the Publication Types Scope Notes for definitions of publication types used in all NLM databases. |
| Languages in MEDLINE/PubMed | A list of language codes and translations used in MEDLINE/PubMed. |
| PubMed Citation Status Subsets (from PubMed Help) | A list of status designations for PubMed records. |
| Journal and Citation Subsets | The table of subset codes assigned to MEDLINE citations. See also FAQ: Finding a List of Abridged Index Medicus or Index Medicus Journal Titles. |
| Grant Abbreviation and Institute Acronyms | The abbreviation, acronym and name for Institutes and Grants found in the ID field in MEDLINE. |
| Structured Abstracts | A description of structured abstracts and how they are formatted for MEDLINE. |
| PubMed Character Conversions | How special characters are translated in PubMed. |
| Code Designations for Greek Characters in the Gene Symbol Field | How Greek characters are represented in MEDLINE in the Gene Symbol field (used only 1991-1995). |
| Special Collaborative Arrangements | An explanation of NLM's special collaborative arrangements for selecting publications. |
| What is the Cochrane Collaboration? | An explanation of the collaboration created to improve clinical trials information in MEDLINE. |
| NLM DTDs | A DTD (Document Type Definition) defines the building blocks of an XML document. It defines the document structure with a list of allowable elements. These are the DTDs that define NLM's XML data. See also Information for Licensees of NLM Data |
| Entrez DTDs | The DTDs for the Entrez Databases, including MEDLINE and PubMed. |
DATA POLICIES
| Detailed Field/Data Element Descriptions | Descriptions of the fields in PubMed/MEDLINE records, with detailed historical information, when available. (Note: This document contains policy information for selected data elements.) |
| MEDLINE/PubMed Journal Article Citation Format | Background on the citation style used in MEDLINE/PubMed. See also Sample References (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals) |
| Construction of National Library of Medicine Title Abbreviations (Fact Sheet) | How journal title abbreviations are constructed. |
| Errata, Retraction, Partial Retraction, Corrected and Republished Articles, Duplicate Publication, Comment, Update, Patient Summary and Republished (Reprinted) Article Policy for MEDLINE (Fact Sheet) | NLM's policies on these publication events. |
| Clinical Trial Registry Numbers in MEDLINE/PubMed Records | Clinical trials information in MEDLINE/PubMed records. |
| Authorship in MEDLINE | Information on how authorship is reflected in MEDLINE. |
| Annual MEDLINE/PubMed Year-End Processing Activities |
A description of the annual maintenance, known as year-end processing, done primarily to update MEDLINE citations to the forthcoming year’s version of MeSH. |
| Copyright Information & Downloading National Library of Medicine Data | Guidance for redistribution of MEDLINE/PubMed and other NLM data. |
| Structured Abstracts | A description of structured abstracts and how they are formatted for MEDLINE. |
SEARCHING PUBMED
(See also Help and Training Resources)
| PubMed Search Field Descriptions and Tags (from PubMed Help) | A table of all searchable fields in PubMed. |
| MeSH Qualifier (Subheading) Hierarchies | Subheadings arranged in their logical hierarchical groupings, or families. Searching a broader subheading in PubMed will automatically search more specific subheadings. |
| PubMed Subset Strategies | The search strategies for each PubMed subject subset. |
| Clinical Queries Filter Table | Search filters for each clinical and medical genetics category for the PubMed Clinical Queries. |
| Special Queries | A directory of topic-specific PubMed queries. |
| Journal and Citation Subsets | The table of subset codes assigned to MEDLINE citations. See also FAQ: Finding a List of Abridged Index Medicus or Index Medicus Journal Titles. |
| Journal Subject Terms | Subject Terms are assigned by NLM at the journal level to describe the journal's overall scope. These terms are also used for the Subject Listing in the NLM publication: List of Journals Indexed for MEDLINE. |
| Citations by Funding Support | An explanation and statistics of research funding support information on MEDLINE citations. |
| Computation of Related Articles | A white paper that explains the function of the Related Articles feature. |
TOOLS & UTILITIES
| NCBI Entrez Programming Utilities | The Entrez Programming Utilities (or E-Utilities) provide a method for accessing Entrez (including PubMed) data outside of the regular Web query interface. |
| LinkOut | The service that links PubMed records to full text providers and other external resources related to the citation. |
| Leasing NLM Data | Information on leasing MEDLINE/PubMed and other NLM data. |
| PMID : PMCID Converter | Convert PubMed IDs to PubMedCentral IDs and vice versa. |
MEDLINE® STATISTICS
| Key MEDLINE Indicators | Citations indexed, number of searches, journal titles, citations keyboarded, OCRed and retrieved via XML; retractions, errata and comments. |
| Number of Titles Currently Indexed | The number of journal titles currently indexed for MEDLINE in PubMed. |
| Number of Searches | Graph of number of searches of MEDLINE since January, 1997. See also PubMed Searches. |
| Indexing Statistics: | Number of journals and citations indexed for Index Medicus and MEDLINE, by year and by five-year period. |
| Citation Counts by Year of Publication | Total number, number published in the U.S., and percent published in the US for each year of publication. |
| Authors per Citation | Number of personal authors and collective authors per citation, and trends over time. |
| MEDLINE Data Entry by Fiscal Year | Total citations entered by keyboarding, OCRed and received electronically in XML. |
| Citations Added to MEDLINE by Fiscal Year | Total of indexed citations by fiscal year. |
| Number of Citations to English Language Articles; Number of Citations Containing Abstracts | By date ranges, the number and percent of citations to English language and non-English language articles, and number and percent with abstracts. |
| Citations by Funding Support | An explanation and statistics of research funding support information on MEDLINE citations. |
| Statistical Reports on MEDLINE/PubMed Baseline Data | Total citations containing each data element; total occurrences of each element; minimum/average/maximum occurrences of each element in a record; minimum/average/maximum length of a single element occurrence; average record size; and other statistical data describing the content and size of the elements. Various data from 2002-. |
HELP & TRAINING RESOURCES
| PubMed Online Training Resources | The PubMed Tutorial, Quick Tours and more. See also NLM's Distance Education Resources. |
| The Basics of MeSH | An instructional Web site designed to help you understand more about the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and how to use them to search MEDLINE/PubMed for medical literature and information. |
| Classroom Training (National Training Center and Clearinghouse) | Free PubMed courses available for health sciences librarians and information specialists in the United States. For training outside of the United States, contact your nearest International MEDLARS Center or consider using the online training options, above. |
| Training Manuals | Workbooks used in conjunction with the classes offered by the National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC). |
| PubMed Frequently Asked Questions | Frequently asked questions about MEDLINE and PubMed. See also the MEDLINE/PubMed FAQ. |
| PubMed Glossary | A glossary of terms used with MEDLINE and PubMed, from the PubMed Tutorial. |
| PubMed Help | Searchable Help document for PubMed, available on the NCBI Bookshelf. |
Last reviewed: 23 May 2008
Last updated: 12 August 2008
First published: 06 November 2006
Metadata| Permanence level: Permanence Not Guaranteed