The brief communication by Smith, published in the January 2004 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association [1], overlooks changes that were made to PubMed automatic term mapping prior to final acceptance and publication of the article. Smith states that PubMed employs “four vocabulary-controlled mapping tables: MeSH Translation Table, Journals Translation Table, Phrase List, and Author Index.” [2]. However, as announced in the March–April 2003 NLM Technical Bulletin, the phrase list was removed from automatic term mapping [3].
Automatic term mapping now includes only the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) translation table, the journals translation table, and the author index. Phrase search occurs only under these conditions: the phrase is entered with a search tag, enclosed in double quotes; the term is hyphenated; or the term is truncated. As Smith suggests, searchers should use caution when entering unqualified journal titles in PubMed.
References
- Smith AM. An examination of PubMed's ability to disambiguate subject queries and journal title queries. J Med Libr Assoc. January2004 92(1). 97–100. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Smith AM. An examination of PubMed's ability to disambiguate subject queries and journal title queries. J Med Libr Assoc. January2004 92(1). 97–100. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Nahin AM. Change to PubMed's automatic term mapping affects phrase searching. NLM Tech Bull. Mar–Apr 2003 (331). e3. [Google Scholar]