Information AboutMedline |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MEDLINE | |
| bioinformatics databases | |
| academic publishing | |
| national institutes of health | |
| medical research | |
| domain specific search engines | |
| bibliographic databases | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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Compiled by the U.S. National Library Of Medicine (NLM), MEDLINE is freely available on the Internet and searchable via PubMed and NLM's National Center for Biotechnology Information's Entrez system. THE DATABASE The database contains more than 13 million records from approximately 4,800 selected publications covering biomedicine and health from 1966 to the present. The database is freely accessible via the PubMed interface, and new citations are added Tuesday through Saturday. For citations added during 1995-2003: about 48% are for cited articles published in the U.S., about 88% are published in English, and about 76% have English abstracts written by authors of the articles. INDEXING MEDLINE uses Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for information retrieval. Engines designed to search MEDLINE (such as Entrez ) generally use a Boolean Expression combining MeSH terms, words in abstract and title of the article, author names, date of publication, etc. Entrez allows also to find articles similar to a given one based on a mathematical scoring system that takes into account the similarity of word content of the abstracts and titles of two articles. IMPACT MEDLINE functions as an important resource for biomedical researchers and Journal Clubs from all over the world. Along with the Cochrane Library , MEDLINE facilitates Evidence-based Medicine . Most Systematic Review articles published nowadays build on extensive searches of MEDLINE to identify articles that might be useful in the review. Many articles mention the terms that have been used to search MEDLINE, to make the search reproducible for other scientists. Additionally, MEDLINE influences researchers in their choice of journals in which to publish. Few researchers today would consider publishing in a journal not indexed by MEDLINE because then other researchers would not find (and cite) their work. INCLUSION OF JOURNALS Selection of journals for inclusion in MEDLINE does not have a published set of objective criteria. Selection is based on the recommendations of a panel, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee ( LSTRC ), based on scientific policy and scientific quality. The Board of Regents of the Library sets policy for the Library. The decision whether or not to index a journal is ultimately the responsibility of the Director of the National Library Of Medicine . Lack of published objective criteria for inclusion of medical journals has led to claims of bias and censorship, especially from supporters of Alternative Medicine . For example, the Journal Of Orthomolecular Medicine has been repeatedly refused indexing over a period of 35 years, leading to claims of bias by Dr. Abram Hoffer and Dr. Andrew Saul, amongst others. On the other hand, indexing the contents of nearly 5,000 journals represents a huge ongoing challenge for a limited staff of indexers. Expansion of that list does occur, but it is slow. USAGE Although it seems simple, searching MEDLINE effectively is a learned skill. Without some training it is easy to become frustrated by the amount of articles a simple search turns up. Contrarily, it is difficult to be sure that the search is comprehensive, even if it has collected thousands of articles. There are tutorials for instruction on the PubMed interface to MEDLINE. Unlike Google searching of the Web, PubMed searching of MEDLINE requires a little investment of time. These tutorials are well worth the time they take. The Indexers classify all articles according to subject matter using a standardized vocabulary to describe the subjects - Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Using the MeSH database to define the subject of interest is one of the most useful ways to improve the quality of a search. Using MeSH terms in conjunction with Limits (such as publication date or publication type), Qualifiers (such as adverse effects or prevention and control), and text-word searching is another. Finding one article on the subject and clicking on the "Related Articles" link to get a collection of similarly classified articles is a good way to expand a search that yields few results. In addition to the National Library of Medicine's excellent tutorials , pages from a book on MEDLINE usage can be browsed at Google Book Search . SEE ALSO
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