MEDLINE - sporedata/researchdesigneR GitHub Wiki

General description

MEDLINE is the principal bibliographic database of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) containing over 31 million references to journal articles in the life sciences.

Although primarily in English, MEDLINE includes articles in over 40 languages. It covers articles from over 5,600 biomedical journals published in the United States and over 80 other countries, from the 1940s to the present. MEDLINE includes references to journal articles in the fields of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care, and preclinical sciences.

Articles in MEDLINE are indexed with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. MEDLINE is accessible online via PubMed, a free search engine maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).

MEDLINE is the online equivalent of the MEDical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS) (first created in 1964) and a major part of PubMed, a literature database created and kept up to date by the NLM National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). NLM Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) indexing of the entries is one of MEDLINE's unique features.

MEDLINE's data can be integrated with reference management tools like EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, which help researchers manage citations and create bibliographies. Researchers and developers can access MEDLINE data programmatically using the NCBI’s E-utilities.

MEDLINE benefits

  • MEDLINE is a key resource for evidence-based practice, allowing healthcare professionals to access and analyze relevant research evidence.
  • It gives users access to a wealth of knowledge resources, including as journals and other written works, that can support decision-making and patient care.
  • Because of its widespread usage in the biomedical and healthcare industries, MEDLINE is an invaluable tool for information service providers and researchers.
  • All things considered, the MEDLINE database is crucial for getting access to biological literature, carrying out research, and coming to wise conclusions in the healthcare industry.
  • Additionally, it provides a productive method for doing systematic literature searches, assisting researchers in finding up-to-date and pertinent data for certain clinical problems.

Limitations

  • Abstracts may not re£ect an article’s content.
  • Many randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are not easily found.
  • Indexes only an estimated 27% of the total bio- medical journals published.
  • Some publications are not included and the database is structured using medical subject headings (MeSH terms)

Related publications

Data access

PubMed data, including MEDLINE, can be downloaded as described on the Download PubMed Data page.