PubMed: Your Gateway to Biomedical Literature

PubMed is a vital, free, and openly accessible online database maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), primarily comprising the MEDLINE database, offering references and abstracts across life sciences and biomedicine. Launched in January 1996 and made publicly free in June 1997, it revolutionized access to medical literature, shifting from institutional-only access to convenient home and office searching. Beyond MEDLINE, it encompasses over 35 million citations and abstracts, some dating selectively back to 1809, alongside older Index Medicus content and links to 10.9 million freely available full-text articles.

The platform boasts sophisticated search functions that automatically enhance user queries with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and Boolean operators, and offers mobile access, despite a 2020 website redesign that drew some criticism. While a powerful resource, it has faced some criticism for occasionally including articles from predatory journals due to certain indexing vulnerabilities.