About PubMed
PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health–both globally and personally.
PubMed contains more than 39 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not include full text journal articles; howeverlinks to the full text are often present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).
Available to the public online since 1996PubMed was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
About the Content
Citations in PubMed primarily stem from the biomedicine and health fieldsand related disciplines such as life sciencesbehavioral scienceschemical sciencesand bioengineering.
PubMed facilitates searching across several NLM literature resources:
MEDLINE
MEDLINE is the largest component of PubMed and consists primarily of citations from journals selected for MEDLINE; articles indexed with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and curated with fundinggeneticchemical and other metadata.
PubMed Central (PMC)
Citations for PubMed Central (PMC) articles make up the second largest component of PubMed.
PMC is a full text archive that includes articles from journals reviewed and selected by NLM for archiving (current and historical)as well as individual articles collected for archiving in compliance with funder policies.
Bookshelf
The final component of PubMed is citations for books and some individual chapters available on Bookshelf.
Bookshelf is a full text archive of booksreportsdatabasesand other documents related to biomedicalhealthand life sciences.
Additional Resources
- Please see PubMed Coverage for more information about the types of content included in PubMed.
- For how-to information on searching the PubMed databasesee the PubMed User Guide.
Last update: March 112025