Notable Data Changes in MEDLINE during 2015 Year-End Processing (YEP)

Posted by Marco Tamase on November 26th, 2014 Posted in: NLM Products, PubMed

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The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is currently involved in MEDLINE year-end processing (YEP) activities. These include changing the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) main headings as well as Supplementary Concept Records that standardize names and associated numbers for chemical, protocols, and diseases that are not main headings. The MeSH edits include existing MEDLINE citations to conform with the 2015 version of MeSH, and other global changes. Notable data changes made to MEDLINE during Year-End Processing (YEP) for 2015 include:

MeSH Vocabulary Changes for 2015
Lists of new descriptors, changed descriptors, deleted descriptors, and new descriptors by tree subcategory are available on the NLM website. For more information about MeSH use and structure, as well as recent updates and availability of data, visit Introduction to MeSH – 2015. The MeSH Browser currently points to the 2015 MeSH vocabulary with a link to the 2014 MeSH vocabulary.

Entry Combination Revisions
This year during YEP, NLM will again retrospectively replace certain MeSH heading/subheading combinations, known as Entry Combinations, with the new precoordinated MeSH heading. If you get no retrieval for a MeSH Heading/subheading combination check the heading in the 2015 MeSH Browser to see if the Entry Combination information indicates a different term.

Interview [PT]
In a new change in policy, MEDLINE citations that are cited with the Publication Type [PT] Interview will have both the Interviewee and Interviewer cited as authors. The first author will be the Interviewee and the second author will be the Interviewer. In the past we only cited the Interviewee as the author.

Author Affiliation
Effective with the implementation of the new PubMed system in mid-December and going forward, NLM will allow for multiple Author Affiliations for all Authors, Corporate Authors and Investigators, if the data are supplied by the publisher in their XML submissions for MEDLINE indexed journals.

MeSH Unique Identifier
Also effective with the implementation of the new PubMed system in mid-December and going forward NLM will be including the MeSH Unique Identifier for MeSH Headings, Subheadings, Name of Substance, Supplementary MeSH Name and Publication Types. These Unique Identifiers are displayed in the PubMed XML view only.

Structured Abstracts
In November 2014, NLM added 345 new labels to the list of structured abstract labels. This brings the total of vetted and mapped labels to 2,799. For more information, visit Structured Abstracts in MEDLINE: Newly Identified and Mapped Labels Available.

New Indexing Policy
Effective for 2015 indexing forward, the more general MeSH heading Mice, Rats, or Cricetinae will no longer be added to a MEDLINE citation when one of their children terms is selected by the indexer. This change now aligns with the basic indexing policy of indexing to the most specific heading (and not also adding the parent term) and using the Tree structures for retrieval. The MeSH heading Animals will still be added, as usual, to support the Animals search limit.

LR (Modification Date) on In Process Citations
Starting around the last week in November 2014, NLM will tag In Process citations with an LR (Modification Date) when those citations have been edited to add Grant information or PMCIDs that have been identified by NCBI automatic machine detection. The purpose of this change for these particular updates to In Process citations is to facilitate the tracking of compliance for NIH Public Access. NLM already assigns an LR for these updates to completed citations (MEDLINE and PubMed-not-MEDLINE subsets) and to the “as supplied by publisher” citations (publisher subset).

Dataset [PT]
The Dataset [PT] value will be used for 2015 indexing. PubMed will display the following new display labels for linking between a Dataset citation and the original research citation.

• Dataset described in: – this would appear on the citation for the original paper (search term: hasdatasetdescribedin)
• Dataset use reported in: – this would appear on the citation for the dataset description (search term: hasdatasetusereportedin)

Visit NLM Technical Bulletin: MEDLINE Data Changes — 2015 for additional information.