MEDLINE Complete

Abstract

According to the vendor, ''Of the 2,500+ full-text journals available in MEDLINE Complete, more than 1,350 titles are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search, Health Source or Biomedical Reference Collection. [...]EBSCO is attempting to match the release of NLM's citations onto MEDLINE, but EBSCO indexes data differently than NLM does, and the differences take time to reconcile, which delays loading the full text.

MEDLINE Complete. EBSCO Information Services, 10 Estes Street, Ipswich, MA 01938; 978.356.6500 or 800.653.2726 (toll-free USA & Canada); http://www.EBSCOhost.com/biomedical-libraries/MEDLINE -complete; institutional subscriptions only; contact vendor for pricing.

Purpose

According to the vendor, ''MEDLINE Complete is the largest companion to the MEDLINE index and provides full text for over 2,500 medical journals. Many are available with no embargo to allow users to access the information as soon as it's published'' [1].

Description

MEDLINE Complete contains the entire MEDLINE database, along with the full text of more than 2,400 of the indexed journals. Its structure, layout, and features are similar to many other EBSCO databases: the dates of each issue are lined up down the right side of the page, allowing subscribers to drill down to the desired volume, issue, or article level; it can be searched on both desktop and mobile platforms; it can be searched on its own or with other EBSCO databases or mined for its content; and it is interoperable with link resolvers, allowing subscribers to link from other databases to the full text in MEDLINE Complete. Its unique feature is that it offers the full text of many popular MEDLINE-indexed journals that are not available in other databases. In fact, no other MEDLINE-specific, full-text collections are currently on the market. According to the vendor, ''Of the 2,500+ full-text journals available in MEDLINE Complete, more than 1,350 titles are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search, Health Source or Biomedical Reference Collection. In addition, MEDLINE Complete contains more than 1,050 unique titles not found in MEDLINE with Full Text'' [1].

Benefits

The greatest benefit of MEDLINE Complete is the breadth of its content. In looking at the product's title list, a potential subscriber would be excited by the impressive holdings, especially when looking at titles that are listed as being available without embargo, such as American Family Physician, American Journal of Clinical Pathology, American Journal of Health- System Pharmacy, American Journal of Respiratory & Critical Care Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Biochemical Journal, Diabetes, Diabetes Care, and Journal of Clinical Oncology. Beyond the non-embargoed titles, the product is unique in its efforts to release its full text simultaneously with the National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) release of citations to MEDLINE. It also has the great asset of being a part of the EBSCO family, being easily integrated into link resolvers, and adding fulltext heftto other EBSCO database subscriptions.

After working with an institutional subscription for two years, however, I have observed some significant limitations. There is a significant gap between the product's claims and its actual content. Many instances of missing content have been, and continue to be, reported to the EBSCO help desk. There are many gaps between what the title lists say the database should contain and what is actually there. E-pub ahead of print content is not available in MEDLINE Complete for many months, and content released within the last six months cannot be expected to be reliably available in the product, despite what the title lists say.

The major problem caused by these gaps relates to the communication between EBSCO and link resolver vendors, such as ProQuest and Ex Libris. It is unclear how EBSCO communicates with other vendors when content is unavailable or delayed on MEDLINE Complete. This leads users into a frustrating loop of clicking on link resolver buttons, with the mismatch of data causing confusion.

Another observation is the type of full-text journal content available in MEDLINE Complete. EBSCO provides title lists for each of its databases with information on start and end dates, full-text delays, peer review, and type of journal. A closer examination of the 2,549 journal titles listed for MEDLINE Complete reveals that only 712 are currently available, peer reviewed, and without an embargo. Out of these, 712 journals, nearly 17%, are open access journals from Hindawi, BioMed Central, or PLOS. Journals from smaller open access publishers were not checked against this list, so the percentage of freely available journals is potentially higher [2].

When EBSCO was asked to respond to these issues for this product review, they had no comment. After 2 years of working with technical support at EBSCO, I have drawn several conclusions: First, the amount of content that MEDLINE Complete is trying to index is ambitious: 2,400+ journals are full text in MEDLINE Complete from over 500 publishers. Second, EBSCO is attempting to match the release of NLM's citations onto MEDLINE, but EBSCO indexes data differently than NLM does, and the differences take time to reconcile, which delays loading the full text. Finally, EBSCO's promises of timeliness are very optimistic. Matching the MEDLINE index with NLM's release, and then additionally matching the full text of journals from many different publishers to the citations, is an arduous and not altogether automated process. The result is a delay in loading the full text.

Despite these drawbacks, the product is still worth the investment for many institutions. It offers a significant amount of content for the price. Problems must be reported to EBSCO's technical support as they arise, and users need to be told that the current content fromMEDLINE Complete may not be available, despite the link resolver's listing it as available. These tradeoffs are often worth the full-text content and the ease of interoperability between MEDLINE Complete and other EBSCO subscriptions.

References

References

1. EBSCO. MEDLINE Complete [Internet]. EBSCO; 2014 [cited 15 Aug 2014]. ,http://www.EBSCOhost.com/ biomedical-libraries/MEDLINE-complete..

2. EBSCO. MEDLINE complete fulltext title list [Internet]. EBSCO [cited 15 Aug 2014]. ,http://www.EBSCOhost . com/titleLists/ozh-coverage.htm..

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3163/1536-5050 .103.1.018