PubMed alternatives to search MEDLINE: An environmental scan.

ABSTRACT

The prime objective of this article is to introduce the newer methods to access, search and process MEDLINE citations. It also aims to provide a brief overview of each service’s salient features. A targeted search was conducted in MEDLINE through the OVID gateway. This was followed with a search in Google Scholar as well as Google and Bing. Ninety‑two web‑based services that can be used to search MEDLINE were identified. The list was shortened to 24 by applying a set of relevancy criteria to select those services more relevant to general medical and dental users. Salient features of the selected services are outlined and a use case based classification of the system has been proposed to help dental practitioners and researchers select the appropriate service for a given purpose.