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MEDLINE®: Number of Citations to English Language Articles; Number of Citations Containing Abstracts1

Years of Publication Total # Records # English (%) # Non-English (%) # with Abstracts (%)
2005-2007* 1,796,808 1,645,999 ( 92% ) 150,809 ( 8% ) 1,473,001 ( 82% )
2000-2004 2,643,294 2,363,604 ( 89% ) 279,690 ( 11% ) 2,085,331 ( 79% )
1995-1999 2,173,785 1,907,140 ( 88% ) 266,645 ( 12% ) 1,637,508 ( 75% )
1990-1994 1,973,870 1,651,843 ( 84% ) 322,027 ( 16% ) 1,438,237 ( 73% )
1985-1989 1,743,611 1,349,668 ( 77% ) 393,943 ( 23% ) 1,065,845 ( 61% )
1980-1984 1,438,979 1,068,937 ( 74% ) 370,042 ( 26% ) 721,020 ( 50% )
1975-1979 1,289,094 894,483 ( 69% ) 394,611 ( 31% ) 530,675 ( 41% )
1970-1974 1,109,936 695,556 ( 63% ) 414,380 ( 37% ) 29,264 ( <1% )
1965-1969 941,707 512,456 ( 54% ) 429,251 ( 46% ) 14,994 ( <1% )
1960-1964** 557,369 269,063 ( 48% ) 288,306 ( 52% ) 3,788 ( <1% )
1955-1959** 362,549 172,679 ( 48% ) 189,870 ( 52% ) 287 ( <1% )
1950-1954** 369,497 171,035 ( 46% ) 198,462 ( 54% ) 43 ( <1% )
pre-1950** 94,567 46,722 ( 49% ) 47,845 ( 51% ) 90 ( <1% )
Totals*** 16,495,066 12,749,185 ( 77% ) 3,745,881 ( 23% ) 9,000,083 ( 55% )

1Includes author abstracts (in AB field) or abstracts written by someone other than the author (in OAB, other abstract field).

*Based on searches performed in PubMed® (limited to MEDLINE) on February 22, 2008. Publication year 2007 is not yet complete.

**As of December 2006, OLDMEDLINE citations that have all of their original subject terms mapped to current MeSH are included in MEDLINE.

***PubMed includes both the print and electronic publication dates in a publication date search, therefore citations may be counted under more than one year. The totals do not include these duplicates.

NLM began to include abstracts routinely in online citations in 1975. Abstracts in earlier years largely come from NLM's collaborating partners and some projects to load data from back issues (such as from PubMed Central and other sources). When adding missing citations (gaps) in the OLDMEDLINE range of years (pre-1966), abstracts, if present in the original article, are now included.

Last reviewed: 23 April 2008
Last updated: 23 April 2008
First published: 25 June 2003
Metadata| Permanence level: Permanence Not Guaranteed