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MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System
MEDLARS (information retrieval)

MEDLARS is a computerised biomedical bibliography retrieval system. It was launched by the National Library of Medicine in 1964 and was the first large scale, computer based, retrospective search service available to the general public....
 Online) is a literature database
Bibliographic database

A bibliographic or library database is a database of bibliography records. It may be a database containing information about books and other materials held in a library or, as the term is more often used, an electronic index to academic journal or magazines article s, containing citations, Abstract and often either the full text of...
 of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes medicine
Medicine

Medicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, nursing
Nursing

Nursing is a healthcare profession focused on the detail-oriented care of individuals, family, and community in attaining, maintaining, and recovering optimal health and functioning....
, pharmacy
Pharmacy

Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemistrys, and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of medication....
, dentistry
Dentistry

Dentistry is the known evaluation, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases, disorders and conditions of the mouth, maxillofacial area and the adjacent and associated structures and their impact on the human body....
, veterinary medicine
Veterinary medicine

Veterinary medicine is that branch of medical science,which deals with the study of diagnosis,treatment and prevention of diseases in companion,domestic, exotic, wildlife and production animals....
, and health care
Health care

File:Ear surgery on a patient.jpgFile:Monoclonal antibodies3.jpgHealth care, or healthcare, refers to the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the Medicine, pharmaceutical, Dentistry, clinical laboratory sciences , nursing, and allied health professions....
. MEDLINE covers much of the literature in biology
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
 and biochemistry
Biochemistry

Biochemistry is the study of the chemistry processes in living organisms. It deals with the structure and function of cellular components such as proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids and other biomolecules....
, and fields such as molecular evolution
Molecular evolution

Molecular evolution is the process of evolution at the scale of DNA, RNA, and proteins. Molecular evolution emerged as a scientific field in the 1960s as researchers from molecular biology, evolutionary biology and population genetics sought to understand recent discoveries on the structure and function of nucleic acids and protein....
. Listing of an article or journal in MEDLINE is not endorsement.

Compiled by the U.S. National Library of Medicine
United States National Library of Medicine

The United States National Library of Medicine , operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. The collections of the National Library of Medicine include more than seven million books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs, and images on medicine and related science...
 (NLM), MEDLINE is freely available on the Internet and searchable via PubMed
PubMed

PubMed is a free search engine for accessing the MEDLINE bibliographic database of citations, abstracts and some full text articles on life sciences and biomedical topics....
 and NLM's National Center for Biotechnology Information's Entrez
Entrez

The Entrez Global Query Cross-Database Search System is a powerful federated search engine, or web portal that allows users to search many discrete health sciences databases at the National Center for Biotechnology Information website....
 system.

database contains more than 18 million (2008) records from approximately 5,000 selected publications (, Feb 2007) covering biomedicine and health from 1950 to the present.






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MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System
MEDLARS (information retrieval)

MEDLARS is a computerised biomedical bibliography retrieval system. It was launched by the National Library of Medicine in 1964 and was the first large scale, computer based, retrospective search service available to the general public....
 Online) is a literature database
Bibliographic database

A bibliographic or library database is a database of bibliography records. It may be a database containing information about books and other materials held in a library or, as the term is more often used, an electronic index to academic journal or magazines article s, containing citations, Abstract and often either the full text of...
 of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes medicine
Medicine

Medicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, nursing
Nursing

Nursing is a healthcare profession focused on the detail-oriented care of individuals, family, and community in attaining, maintaining, and recovering optimal health and functioning....
, pharmacy
Pharmacy

Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemistrys, and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of medication....
, dentistry
Dentistry

Dentistry is the known evaluation, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases, disorders and conditions of the mouth, maxillofacial area and the adjacent and associated structures and their impact on the human body....
, veterinary medicine
Veterinary medicine

Veterinary medicine is that branch of medical science,which deals with the study of diagnosis,treatment and prevention of diseases in companion,domestic, exotic, wildlife and production animals....
, and health care
Health care

File:Ear surgery on a patient.jpgFile:Monoclonal antibodies3.jpgHealth care, or healthcare, refers to the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the Medicine, pharmaceutical, Dentistry, clinical laboratory sciences , nursing, and allied health professions....
. MEDLINE covers much of the literature in biology
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
 and biochemistry
Biochemistry

Biochemistry is the study of the chemistry processes in living organisms. It deals with the structure and function of cellular components such as proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids and other biomolecules....
, and fields such as molecular evolution
Molecular evolution

Molecular evolution is the process of evolution at the scale of DNA, RNA, and proteins. Molecular evolution emerged as a scientific field in the 1960s as researchers from molecular biology, evolutionary biology and population genetics sought to understand recent discoveries on the structure and function of nucleic acids and protein....
. Listing of an article or journal in MEDLINE is not endorsement.

Compiled by the U.S. National Library of Medicine
United States National Library of Medicine

The United States National Library of Medicine , operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. The collections of the National Library of Medicine include more than seven million books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs, and images on medicine and related science...
 (NLM), MEDLINE is freely available on the Internet and searchable via PubMed
PubMed

PubMed is a free search engine for accessing the MEDLINE bibliographic database of citations, abstracts and some full text articles on life sciences and biomedical topics....
 and NLM's National Center for Biotechnology Information's Entrez
Entrez

The Entrez Global Query Cross-Database Search System is a powerful federated search engine, or web portal that allows users to search many discrete health sciences databases at the National Center for Biotechnology Information website....
 system.

The database

The database contains more than 18 million (2008) records from approximately 5,000 selected publications (, Feb 2007) covering biomedicine and health from 1950 to the present. Originally the database covered 1965+, but this has now been enhanced, and records as far back as the 1950/51 printed indexes are now within the main index. 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
Medical Subject Headings

Medical Subject Headings is a huge controlled vocabulary for the purpose of index journal articles and books in the life sciences; it can also serve as a thesaurus that facilitates searching....
 (MeSH) for information retrieval. Engines designed to search MEDLINE (such as Entrez
Entrez

The Entrez Global Query Cross-Database Search System is a powerful federated search engine, or web portal that allows users to search many discrete health sciences databases at the National Center for Biotechnology Information website....
) generally use a Boolean expression
Boolean expression

A Boolean expression is an expression that results in a Boolean value, that is, TRUE or FALSE. For example, the value for 5 > 3 is TRUE, the value for "An apple is not a fruit" is FALSE....
 combining MeSH terms, words in abstract and title of the article, author names, date of publication, etc. Entrez
Entrez

The Entrez Global Query Cross-Database Search System is a powerful federated search engine, or web portal that allows users to search many discrete health sciences databases at the National Center for Biotechnology Information website....
 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 club
Journal club

A journal club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in scientific literature. Journal clubs are usually organized around a defined subject in basic or applied research....
s from all over the world. Along with the Cochrane Library
Cochrane Library

The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases in medicine and other healthcare specialties provided by the Cochrane Collaboration and other organisations....
 and a number of other databases, MEDLINE facilitates evidence-based medicine
Evidence-based medicine

Evidence-based medicine aims to apply evidence gained from the scientific method to certain parts of medical practice. It seeks to assess the quality of evidence relevant to the risks and benefits of therapy ....
. Most systematic review
Systematic review

A systematic review is a literature review focused on a single question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question....
 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, so that the search is reproducible by other scientists.

Additionally, MEDLINE influences researchers in their choice of journals in which to publish. Few biomedical 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

Approximately 5,000 biomedical journals are indexed in MEDLINE. Selection is based on the recommendations of a panel, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (), based on scientific policy and scientific quality. New journals are not included immediately.

PubMed's Journals Database contains information about each included journal, such as official name abbreviation and URL.

Usage

Searching MEDLINE effectively is a learned skill; untrained users are sometimes frustrated with the large numbers of articles returned by simple searches. Counterintuitively, a search that returns thousands of articles is not guaranteed to be comprehensive.

There are for instruction on the PubMed interface to MEDLINE. Unlike Google searching of the Web, PubMed searching of MEDLINE requires a little investment of time. Using the 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 (such as publication date or publication type), (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 can expand a search that yields few results. In addition to the National Library of Medicine's tutorials, there are several other aids to effective searching, such as pages from a on MEDLINE usage that can be browsed at .

Online access

  • PubMed
    PubMed

    PubMed is a free search engine for accessing the MEDLINE bibliographic database of citations, abstracts and some full text articles on life sciences and biomedical topics....
  • - the Engine for question-Answering in Genomic Literature: a terminology-powered (Gene Ontology
    Gene Ontology

    The Gene Ontology project, or GO, provides a controlled vocabulary to describe gene and gene product attributes in any organism. It can be broadly split into two parts....
    , Swiss-Prot
    Swiss-Prot

    Swiss-Prot is a manually curated biological database of protein sequences. Swiss-Prot was created in 1986 by Amos Bairoch during his PhD and developed by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the European Bioinformatics Institute....
     keywords...) biomedical retrieval engine for MEDLINE.
  • GoPubMed
    GoPubMed

    GoPubMed is a knowledge-based search engine for biomedical texts. TheGene Ontology and Medical Subject Headings serve as "Table of contents" in order to structure the millions of articles of the MEDLINE database....
     - Explore PubMed/MEDLINE with Gene Ontology
    Gene Ontology

    The Gene Ontology project, or GO, provides a controlled vocabulary to describe gene and gene product attributes in any organism. It can be broadly split into two parts....
  • - a PubMed/MEDLINE summary tool. Returns number of papers associated with authors, journals or subjects; broken down by years, MeSH terms, ages, journals, authors etc. Used for exploring authors or journals. Alternatively, useful for generating data on a field of research for review paper purposes.
  • - Explore PubMed/MEDLINE with Gene Ontology
    Gene Ontology

    The Gene Ontology project, or GO, provides a controlled vocabulary to describe gene and gene product attributes in any organism. It can be broadly split into two parts....
     and UniProt
    UniProt

    UniProt is the universal protein resource, a central repository of protein data created by combining Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL and Protein Information Resource....
  • MeshPubMed - Explore PubMed/MEDLINE with Medical Subject Headings
    Medical Subject Headings

    Medical Subject Headings is a huge controlled vocabulary for the purpose of index journal articles and books in the life sciences; it can also serve as a thesaurus that facilitates searching....
     (MeSH)
  • - a data-mining interface to PubMed showing author's status, most frequent coauthors, professional interests, affiliated institution, etc.
  • HubMed
    Hubmed

    HubMed is an alternative, third-party interface to PubMed, the database of biomedical literature produced by the NLM. Features include relevance-ranked search results, web feeds of query updates, direct citation export, tagging and graphical display of related articles....
     - An alternative interface to the PubMed medical literature database.
  • eTBLAST
    ETBLAST

    eTBLAST is a text similarity search engine currently offering access to the MEDLINE database, the National Institutes of Health CRISP database, the Institute of Physics database, and the NASA technical reports database....
     - a natural language text similarity engine for MEDLINE
    MEDLINE

    MEDLINE is a literature Bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care....
     and other text databases.
  • - a Digg
    Digg

    digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories....
    -style site for PubMed/MEDLINE with search functionality through Medical Subject Headings
    Medical Subject Headings

    Medical Subject Headings is a huge controlled vocabulary for the purpose of index journal articles and books in the life sciences; it can also serve as a thesaurus that facilitates searching....
     (MeSH)
  • - Explore the relationships between diseases, drugs and therapies in PubMed using the MeSH ontology
  • Medscape
    Medscape

    Medscape is a web resource for physicians and other health professionals. It features peer-reviewed original medical journal articles, CME , a customized version of the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE database, daily medical news, major conference coverage, and drug information?including a drug database and drug interaction checker....
  • - a gene-centric text-mining search engine for MEDLINE
  • - Clinician-friendly MEDLINE searcing via PDA, wireless devices and the Web
  • - A free web-based alternative interface for Medline search
  • Twease
    Twease

    Twease is an open source biomedical web search engine at www.twease.org which searches MEDLINE.It provides searches based on relevance or chronology; highlights text passages that match the query; collects and exports references seamlessly to RefWorks, EndNote, BibTex; searches for articles similar to a group of articles; and offers a slide...
     - an open-source biomedical search engine


See also

  • Medical Subject Headings
    Medical Subject Headings

    Medical Subject Headings is a huge controlled vocabulary for the purpose of index journal articles and books in the life sciences; it can also serve as a thesaurus that facilitates searching....
  • MedlinePlus
    MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus, with the MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia, is a website network containing health information from the world's largest medical library, the United States National Library of Medicine, in cooperation with the National Institutes of Health....
     — health information for patient
    Patient

    A patient is any person who receives medical attention, care, or Therapy. The person is most often illness or injured and in need of treatment by a physician or other Health care provider, although one who is visiting a physician for a routine check-up may also be viewed as a patient....
    s and health consumers
  • PubChem
    PubChem

    PubChem is a database of Chemistry molecules. The system is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information , a component of the National Library of Medicine, which is part of the United States National Institutes of Health ....
     — an online free chemical service
  • EMBASE
    EMBASE

    EMBASE, or the Excerpta Medica Database, is a biomedical and pharmacological database produced by Elsevier and containing over 11 million records from 1947 to the present....


External links

  • (also available through the shorter link http://pubmed.gov)
  • - MEDLINE Journal Selection
  • - EMBASE.com info site