In order to speed the flow of new information to NLM database searchers, NLM announced the arrival of a new database, PREMEDLINE, on August 13, 1996. This database provides basic citation information and abstracts before they are indexed and put into MEDLINE, and will be updated daily. NLM database searchers will have the opportunity to view citations while they are separately undergoing the process of being indexed for MEDLINE. Citations will remain in PREMEDLINE only until they have had MeSH term s, Publication Types, GenBank accession numbers, and other indexing data added. Once the indexing is finished, the complete records will be added to the weekly MEDLINE update, and the PREMEDLINE record will be deleted from the database.
The PREMEDLINE Unit Record can be retrieved online by entering $INFO PREMEDL at any USER: prompt. PREMEDLINE is available to command language and Internet Grateful Med searchers. It will eventually be added to the databases accessible through Gratefu l Med for Windows as development schedules permit. PREMEDLINE searches will be billed at the same rate as searches in the MEDLINE database.
The rubric [In Process Citation] has been added to the end of every Title (TI) field to identify the status of the citation. Because the file does not include MeSH headings, all subject searching is performed as text word matches against words in the title and abstract (if present). If you do not qualify your search term, the search default is to Text Word (TW) searching. Therefore, all multi-word phrases must be entered as single words ANDed together.
Some citations to foreign language journals will have only the rubric phrase [In Process Citation] in the TI field because the English language title is created and added to the Title field during the indexing process. The lack of a title in the TI f ield means that if the article does not also have an English-language abstract then the citation cannot be retrieved with a Text Word search. Therefore, be aware that Text Word searching in this database may result in some non-English language citations not being retrieved.
The citations in PREMEDLINE are given permanent Unique Identifiers (Ul) that carry over into MEDLINE. The DA (Date of Entry) field, however, is specific to each file. That is, it will not be the same in the two files, reflecting the different dates the record was entered into each database. Also, be aware that these citations have not gone through NLM's quality control process. Citations may include extraneous, erroneous or missing characters in any field. Errors present in the record will be cor rected during the indexing process and the corrected citation will appear in MEDLINE. No errata, commentary, retractions, or corrections will be added to PREMEDLINE.