Bioinformatics: What is MEDLINE and PubMed?

Bioinformatics: What is MEDLINE and PubMed?

Researchers citations are very important in any research at any given field. For bioinformatics these citations are indispensable in any research, for this reason the united states National Library of Medicine (NLM) is providing biomedical literature to researchers or students online.

Since 1879, the NLM has published the Index Medicus which is an index or guide to articles, but with the evolution of information technology, Index Medicus has became a database now known as MEDLINE.

What is MEDLINE:

MEDLINE or (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) is a huge bibliographic database that contains articles from academic journals covering : biology, all branches of medecine, health, molecular biology, biochemistery, microbiology...etc, this data is accessible free over the internet via PubMed.

What is PubMed?

PubMed is a part of Entrez retrieval system, and is a search engine or retrieval system to access MEDLINE citations, abstracts, and full text articles. In addition to MEDLINE citations which are the most found by PubMed, PubMed provides access to other records including in-process citations, some life science journals that submit full text to PubMed Central and may not have been recommended for inclusion in MEDLINE.

As we said before PubMed is part of Entrez retrieval system which is part or the NCBI Website and you can access it from the NCBI website from HERE.


You can find more information about MEDLINE and PubMed, Tutorials and quick tours HERE.

Any question, comment.