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How can I tell if a journal is included in MEDLINE (PubMed)?
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If you are considering submitting a manuscript to a journal, it is a good idea to consider whether that journal is included in databases that researchers will search for information. In medicine, the MEDLINE database provided by the National Library of Medicine, available through the PubMed and Ovid platforms, is one of the premier databases for biomedical research topics.
To ensure your article will be available in MEDLINE once published, you can search for the journal title in the National Library of Medicine Catalog.
On the left side of the results screen, there is an option to filter by journals that are currently indexed (included) in MEDLINE.
Once you have filtered the results to journals currently indexed in MEDLINE, review them to see if the journal is listed. If the journal is not listed, that means it is not currently indexed in MEDLINE. An article that is published in that journal will therefore not be available in Ovid MEDLINE or PubMed.
There is one exception to this rule, specifically for PubMed. If you received NIH funding for your research, publications stemming from that research must be uploaded to PubMed Central per the NIH Public Access Policy. Articles included in PubMed Central will show up in PubMed search results, but will not be available in Ovid MEDLINE.
As you can see in the example above, The New England Journal of Medicine is currently indexed for MEDLINE.
An alternative approach to check if a journal is included in MEDLINE, as well as other databases, is to use a resource called Ulrichsweb. Once you are in Ulrichsweb, search for the journal by title.
Click on the journal title from the list of results.
Scroll down once you are viewing the journal entry to locate the section titled “Abstracting & Indexing.” Click on the left arrow to open the section.
To see if the journal is indexed in MEDLINE, check whether “U.S. National Library of Medicine” is listed. As you can see below, the “U.S. National Library of Medicine” is listed for The New England Journal of Medicine and includes both MEDLINE and PubMed. You can also check in this section whether the journal is indexed in other databases such as Scopus or Web of Science.
