PubMed® Notes for 2007

The following notes explain how PubMed® or searching with PubMed may be affected by changes to MEDLINE® or MeSH® vocabulary for the 2007 system, some of which has been described in the articles listed under Additional Information in the box to the right. Searchers are advised to consider any stored strategies, e.g., My NCBI saved searches, URL links to PubMed, and RSS feeds, which may need to be revised.

• The Limits page menu for "Type of Article" was modified to include nine new Publication Types, including Comparative Study. These MeSH terms were treated as headings until this year.
  
  
• The status tag for OLDMEDLINE records has changed from [PubMed - OLDMEDLINE for pre1966] to [PubMed - OLDMEDLINE].
  
  
• The option for OLDMEDLINE was removed from the Limits "Subsets" menu. The reduced number of citations in this subset and the growing number of older citations being added to PubMed that are not part of the OLDMEDLINE project, have lessened the value of this subset as a limit for searching. The direct search, oldmedline [sb], can still be used.
  
  To limit to older citations, use the Dates section in Limits. Select "Specify date range" on the "Published in the Last:" menu. It is only necessary to enter the latest date of interest (see Figure 1).
  
  
  
  Figure 1: The PubMed Limits screen showing that only the "end" date is needed to retrieve citations for articles published before or during a particular year.
• A new type of Comment/Correction notation has been added to PubMed citations to indicate when an article has been partially retracted. Citations for the partial retraction will display the note, Partial retraction of, followed by citation information for the article being partially retracted. The citation for the article being partially retracted will have the notation, Partial retraction in, followed by citation information. Whenever possible, there will be links between the related citations.
  
  See the chart below for Comment/Correction types, and search and display information effective with the implementation of the 2007 system in mid-December 2006.
  
  

  Comment Correction Type	Search as	MEDLINE Display Field Tag
  Comment in:	hascommentin	CIN
  Comment on:	hascommenton	CON
  Erratum in:	haserratumin	EIN
  Erratum for:	haserratumfor	EFR
  Corrected and republished in:	hascorrectedrepublishedin	CRI
  Corrected and republished from:	hascorrectedrepublishedfrom	CRF
  Retraction in:	hasretractionin	RIN
  Retraction of:	hasretractionof	ROF
  Partial retraction in:	haspartialretractionin	PRIN
  Partial retraction of:	haspartialretractionof	PROF
  Update in:	hasupdatein	UIN
  Update of:	hasupdateof	UOF
  Summary for patients in:	hassummaryforpatientsin	SPIN
  Original Report in:	hasoriginalreportin	ORI
  Republished in:	hasrepublishedin	RPI
  Republished from:	hasrepublishedfrom	RPF

  
  
• MUID (MEDLINE Unique Identifier) data has been removed from records. The PMID remains as the unique identifier for PubMed records.
  
  
• Print dates of publication and electronic dates of publication can now be searched independently of one another. The search tag for print publication date is [ppdat] and the search tag for electronic publication date is [epdat]. The standard PubMed date format, YYYY/MM/DD, should be used. Ranging is also available.
  Examples:
  2006/01 [ppdat]
  2005/10/01:2006/09/30 [epdat]
  
  Please be aware that the recommended method for publication date searching remains using the Date of Publication (found on PubMed's Limits screen, or with the search tag, [dp], for direct searching) as it includes both print and electronic dates (see PubMed Help). These new options are available to assist users creating queries for LinkOut resource files.

By Annette M. Nahin
MEDLARS Management Section

Nahin A. PubMed® Notes for 2007. NLM Tech Bull. 2006 Nov-Dec; (353):e5.