Pubmed vs Pubmed Central vs Entrez:
PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. PubMed contains all of MEDLINE (1966-present), Old Medline (1947-1965), PubMed in-process records (new citations not yet fully indexed), and some additional non-MEDLINE citations. Pubmed includes Pubmed Central (PMC) and Medline, supposedly; But someone said she had found things in PMC that were not in Pubmed; Pubmed Central: 5.8 MILLION full text Articles are archived in PMC. Entrez searches PubMed, Pubmed Central, and numerous other databases, so appears to be the most comprehensive;
PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
When searching PubMed, always click on the “Advanced Search” option. That way you can search by author, subject, article title, journal title, year, and many other options.
What's in PubMed?
· Over 23 million records representing articles in the biomedical literature and a small selection of items from the NCBI Books database.
· Most PubMed records are MEDLINE citations.
· Other records include those in different stages of processing (including records provided directly from the journal publisher) but destined to be MEDLINE citations.
· A relatively small number of records that are included in PubMed but not selected for MEDLINE.
MEDLINE
· PubMed provides access to MEDLINE®, the National Library of Medicine’s premier bibliographic database containing citations and author abstracts from more than 5,600 biomedical journals published in the United States and in other countries.
· The scope of MEDLINE includes such diverse topics as microbiology, delivery of health care, nutrition, pharmacology and environmental health. The categories covered in MEDLINE include everything from anatomy, organisms, diseases, psychiatry, and psychology to the physical sciences.
· MEDLINE currently contains over 21 million references dating back to 1946.
· New material is added Tuesday through Saturday.
· Coverage is worldwide, but most records (about 90%) are from English-language sources or have English abstracts.
· Approximately 83% of citations added in the last five years include a published abstract.
· The National Library of Medicine leases MEDLINE data to researchers and commercial vendors, but PubMed provides free access to MEDLINE directly from NLM.
OLDMEDLINE Records
The over 2 million OLDMEDLINE citations, most without abstracts, were originally printed in hardcopy indexes published from 1946 through 1965.
OLDMEDLINE citations are to articles from international biomedical journals covering the fields of medicine, preclinical sciences, and allied health sciences.
OLDMEDLINE citations have been created using standards that are different from the data entry standards for MEDLINE records. There are also variations among OLDMEDLINE citations in the data fields present as well as in their format, depending on the original source from which the citations were obtained.
Beginning in 2005, the original subject terms applied to the citations in the printed indexes are being mapped to current Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®).
OLDMEDLINE records carry the status tag PubMed - OLDMEDLINE until all original subject terms are mapped to current MeSH. Once all terms are mapped, the records are promoted to status PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE.
What is Index Medicus?
Index Medicus was one of the first and the major index of medical literature published in the world. It was started by John Shaw Billings in 1879 and published hardcopy for 125 consecutive years, in modern times by the National Library of Medicine, but ceased at the end of 2004. It was once an indispensable tool for health professional researchers and librarians, but became less used when its computerized equivalent, MedLine began in 1971. Then in 1997, when Medine was offered freely online and PubMed provided online access, Index Medicus as a heavy hardbound index was seldomly used and subsequently discontinued. A history of Index Medicus is available at the following website: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj04/mj04_im.html
NLM Subject Tree Structures: