 | |
| Content | |
|---|---|
| Description | Medical Subject Headings |
| Data types captured | controlled vocabulary |
| Contact | |
| Research center | United States National Library of Medicine National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| Laboratory | United States National Library of Medicine |
| Authors | F. B. Rogers[1] |
| Primary citation | PMID 13982385 |
| Access | |
| Website | nlm.nih.gov/mesh |
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus that facilitates searching. Created and updated by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), it is used by the MEDLINE/PubMed article database and by NLM's catalog of book holdings. MeSH is also used by ClinicalTrials.gov registry to classify which diseases are studied by trials registered in ClinicalTrials.
MeSH was introduced in the 1960s, with the NLM's own index catalogue and the subject headings of the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus (1940 edition) as precursors. The yearly printed version of MeSH was discontinued in 2007; MeSH is now available only online.[2] It can be browsed and downloaded free of charge through PubMed. Originally in English, MeSH has been translated into numerous other languages and allows retrieval of documents from different origins.
- ^ Rogers, F B (January 1963). "Medical subject headings". Bull Med Libr Assoc. 51 (1): 114–6. ISSN 0025-7338. PMC 197951. PMID 13982385.
- ^ "Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Fact sheet". National Library of Medicine. May 27, 2005. Retrieved May 31, 2007.