Funding Support (Grant) Information in MEDLINE/PubMed - 2012
An important aspect of scientific publication is the indication of funding support. The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®), which is used by the National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) to describe the content of journal articles for MEDLINE®, includes Publication Types to identify financial support of the research that resulted in the published papers when that support is mentioned in the articles:
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
- Research Support, American Recovery & Reinvestment Act
- Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
- Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
- Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
- Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural
These publication types are searchable in PubMed®. The table below gives the number of PubMed citations retrieved as of February 13, 2012. Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.; and Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't have been used since 1975. Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural and Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural have been used since June 2005. Research Support, American Recovery & Reinvestment Act has been used since 2010. It is important to remember that these publication types may be present on any citation regardless of its publication date as long as it was completely processed during or after 1975, 2005, and 2010 respectively.
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Funding Support
(The PubMed search tags are: [dp] date of publication, [pt] publication type, and [gr] grant number.)Search Total* 2011** [dp] 2010 [dp] 2009 [dp] 2008 [dp] 2007 [dp] Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.[pt] OR nih [gr] 1,985,187 101,393 112,096 106,485 102,277 95,359 Number (and percent) of PHS Support in PubMed Central® 520,941
(26%)69,641
(69%)83,386
(74%)79,664
(75%)64,369
(63%)36,808
(39%)Research Support, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [pt] 403 294 125 6 0 0 Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural [pt] 538,120 88,350 95,223 89,577 87,725 85,816 Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural [pt] 25,453 4,603 4,982 4,942 4,916 4,421 NIH Support (see strategy below) 1,698,011 98,877 109,829 104,147 99,732 93,010 Number (and percent) of NIH Support in PubMed Central 483,612
(28%)69,194
(70%)83,065
(76%)79,300
(76%)63,997
(64%)36,505
(39%)Percent of "Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S. [pt] OR nih [gr]" coming entirely or in-part from NIH 86% 98% 98% 98% 98% 98% Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. [pt] 588,870 33,033 34,611 32,061 31,398 30,351 Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't [pt] OR howard hughes [gr] OR united kingdom [gr] OR canada [gr] OR italy [gr] OR ireland [gr] OR austria [gr] OR autism speaks [gr] 4,725,318 342,818 373,142 342,104 317,540 292,026 - *Includes some citations having 2012 as date of publication.
- **More recent dates of publication are not complete due to publication cycles and processing times.
In general, the counts in the above chart do not include citations to articles unless the research was also supported by a grant that was mentioned in the article or reported by other means to provide evidence of compliance with policies such as the NIH Public Access Policy.
In 1981, NLM began to carry the actual grant number for PHS grants, just as it appears in the original article, in the MEDLINE citation. No attempt is made to standardize the format of the grant numbers, except for the prefix portion where the correct format contains the number '0' (zero) and not the letter 'O', e.g.: R01 and not RO1. A computer algorithm scans the grant number to isolate the 2-letter grant code and then adds the agency/institute acronym to the citation. The data are only as dependable as the original source and some mislabeling of the supporting institution may occur as a result of the machine parsing, but the numbers are a good indication of the literature acknowledging research support that is being indexed for MEDLINE.
NIH Support is data obtained with the following strategy:
- NIH [gr] OR Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural [pt] OR Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural [pt]
For comparison purposes, the overall citation counts in PubMed as of February 13, 2012 were:
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Citation Status Total Citations MEDLINE 19,430,768 PubMed-not-MEDLINE 827,468 In process 453,911 Publisher supplied 408,485 OLDMEDLINE 425,851 All PubMed 21,546,483
Interested in more details about searching PubMed for research support publication types and grant numbers?
See the following NLM Technical Bulletin Articles and NLM Web pages:
- Two New Granting Organizations for MEDLINE/PubMed: Autism Speaks and PEPFAR
- Grant Number Information Updated
- United Kingdom Funding Agency Arthritis Research Campaign Changes Its Name
- New United Kingdom Granting Organizations for MEDLINE/PubMed
- European Granting Organization Agency Changes Name
- New European Granting Organizations for MEDLINE®/PubMed®
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research: A New Granting Organization for MEDLINE®/PubMed®
- Grant Numbers in 2009 PubMed® — Display and Search Changes
- Additional Grant Number Information from the United Kingdom
- New
Research Support MeSH® Headings Introduced
mid-Year to 2005 MeSH®
- NIH
Grant Numbers in PubMed® Citations
- Wellcome
Trust Grant Numbers Added to MEDLINE®/PubMed® Citations
- MeSH® Category V Terms: Change in Treatment from MeSH
Heading to Publication Type During Year-End-Processing for Both MEDLINE® and NLM Catalog
- Grant Number Information Found in the GR Field in MEDLINE®/PubMed®
- More Changes to Grant Number Information
