PubMed alternatives to search MEDLINE: An environmental scan

Abstract

The prime objective of this article is to introduce the newer methods to access, search and process MEDLINE citations. It also aims to provide a brief overview of each service′s salient features. A targeted search was conducted in MEDLINE through the OVID gateway. This was followed with a search in Google Scholar as well as Google and Bing. Ninety-two web-based services that can be used to search MEDLINE were identified. The list was shortened to 24 by applying a set of relevancy criteria to select those services more relevant to general medical and dental users. Salient features of the selected services are outlined and a use case based classification of the system has been proposed to help dental practitioners and researchers select the appropriate service for a given purpose.

Keywords

• Algorithm
• as topic
• bibliographic
• databases
• information science
• information storage and retrieval
• Internet
• Medical Subject headings
• MEDLINE
• National Library of Medicine (US)
• PubMed