News
Concerns about PubMed and ERIC
Political developments in the US have raised questions about the future availability of scientific literature in US-funded databases. Most concerns are about PubMed and ERIC, two bibliographic databases widely used by WUR researchers, and both depend on US federal funding. Although there are no concrete indications for censorship and discontinuity, alertness is required. The Library is closely monitoring the developments.
The future of PubMed
A brief blackout of PubMed in March 2025, and inconsistencies in search results, raised concerns about censorship and the continuity of PubMed. A query related to gender and sexual health yielded over 16,000 publications in Europe PMC and only 1,385 in PubMed. However, this discrepancy could be explained by the poor quality of the test search and by technical and content differences between PubMed and Europe PMC. In PubMed titles and abstracts of articles were searched, whereas in Europe PMC, the full text of articles was searched and advanced text-mining techniques were used. However, systematic searching like in PubMed is not possible in Europe PMC.
Nevertheless, concerns remain. Terms like climate change, vaccine, injustice, immigrant, racial diversity and (trans)gender may be banned, and articles or journals may be removed from PubMed. For a list of banned words, see this overview from PEN America. The Scholarly Kitchen published an article on these issues, including a Declaration to defend research against US Government censorship.
The future of ERIC
ERIC, Education Resources Information Center, is a bibliographic database of indexed and full-text education literature and resources funded and managed by the Department of Education in the U.S. It includes over 2 million records and links to the full text of nearly 600,000 publications. It includes journal articles, books, conference papers, curriculum guides, dissertations and policy papers. WUR Library offers this database via the EBSCOhost platform.
The future of ERIC remains uncertain. To reduce overall federal spending, the number of records being added to ERIC may be reduced. First, it was announced that the number of actively cataloged sources would be reduced by approximately 45% starting April 24, 2025, then it was announced that the database will cease operating, but very recently the news came that the work of ERIC will be continued due to a new contract. Moreover, articles will not be removed from the database. EBSCO is following these developments, and will continue the database. EBSCO is also exploring options to provide continued coverage of journals and reports that may be removed from ERIC in the long-term future.
Dutch university libraries are monitoring the situation
Dutch university and medical center libraries collaborate in following these developments and are thinking of alternatives. Librarians regularly test if search terms that may be banned in future are still present in the MeSH Subject Headings. It is also tested if certain ‘controversial’ articles are still available in PubMed. We will keep you updated on the developments.
If you have questions about these developments for your choice of database for your literature search, systematic review, or publishing, please contact us via servicedesk.facilities@wur.nl
Explained: PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Europe PMC and MEDLINE
PubMed is a free-to use bibliographic database managed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). It contains over 38 million records of biomedical, health and life sciences literature. PubMed facilitates searching across MEDLINE, PubMed Central (PMC) and Bookshelf.
MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine's (NLM)bibliographic database that includes over 31 million references to journal articles. The PubMedCentral (PMC) database is a free, full text archive of nearly 11 million journal articles selected by NLM. The NLM Bookshelf database is a free full text archive to books, chapters, reports, and other documents. PubMed does not include full text of articles, but includes links to the full text, when available from other sources, such as a publisher’s website or PMC.
Europe PMC is another free database, which is hosted by the European Bioinformatics Institute. It runs on U.S. infrastructure and relies on PMC. Europe PMC includes 46 million abstracts and 10.7 million full-text articles, including journal articles, preprints, conference papers and comments.
Because of its high quality content, scope and search functionalities, PubMed is still the preferred database for finding biomedical and health literature. The MEDLINE database is an excellent alternative. WUR Library offers access to MEDLINE via two commercial platforms, via Ovid and via EBSCOhost. Records in MEDLINE are indexed with NLM Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). You can search specifically for publications indexed with these Subject Headings, and additionally, you can search in other fields like title and abstract. This is also possible in PubMed.