NLM Dataset Catalog Updated with New Functionalities

Posted by liaison on August 6th, 2025 Posted in: Data Science, Partners Sharing Information

---

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is excited to announce the relaunch of the NLM Dataset Catalog – a centralized, searchable “all in one” platform that connects researchers with biomedical datasets from a wide array of repositories to accelerate scientific research at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). With this relaunch, researchers can now explore more than 2 million NIH-approved biomedical datasets in one place with greater ease and speed! Providing efficient access to biomedical datasets supports the priority of NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to ensure NIH research is “replicable, reproducible, and generalizable.”

The Dataset Catalog was initially launched as a “beta” product in early 2024 and refined through real-world evaluation. We listened closely to customer feedback from NIH staff, medical librarians, and biomedical researchers. Based on their direct feedback, we have rolled out several key enhancements:

• Dataset Expansion: From 80,000 to 2 million datasets, driven by the inclusion of repositories like Figshare and the Johns Hopkins and Dartmouth Dataverses, unlocking 25 times more data for discovery and reuse.

• Enhanced Scalability: AI automation has reduced dataset ingestion time from two weeks to one day.

• MeSH Enrichment Enabling more relevant and semantically rich search results, including enriching all datasets with Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms using AI to further enrich the descriptive metadata for search

• Redesigned Interface: Expanded filtering options and an updated user guide for easy navigation and search.

• Enhanced Search Functionality: Targeted index queries by title, author, funding information, or contributor names.

• Personalized Login Feature: Similar to MyNCBI, allowing users to save search history, repositories, and download datasets of interest.

• Improved Citation Features: Storing and exporting dataset citations in formats like APA.

• SPARQL Query Builder: Helping users explore connections visually through an interactive semantic graph.

To stay up-to-date with NLM news, consider signing up for the NLM Technical Bulletin.