[*See note below]
Following up on the question regarding the future of PubMed, two days ago Hilda Bastian posted "Tracking Shutdown Impact and Changes at PubMed" https://hildabastian.wordpress.com/2025/10/10/tracking-shutdown-impact-a...
, which might be useful to those interested in this topic. Some excerpts below:
"These days, the process of keeping PubMed up-to-date is largely automated and/or done by journal publishers, and it doesn’t look as though there has been a major disruption so far.* The longer the shutdown goes, though, the more likely being on a skeleton crew will have an impact...If there’s a PubMed outage, remember that EuropePMC <https://europepmc.org/> will have all the records PubMed had released... In September, the NLM announced <https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so25/so25_medline_selection.html> that they are reviewing their new MEDLINE journal selection system. That process <https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline/medline_journal_selection.html> is a couple of consultants advising on whether a journal meets the MEDLINE scientific and editorial standards. This is the same process that’s been used for years for the second set of journals that feed articles into PubMed: Open access journals in PMC <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/journalselect/>.
(There are over 2,700 non-MEDLINE journals in PMC <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog?term=(journalspmc)%20NOT%20currentlyindexed> at the moment.)...I think this change in system would make it much simpler to politicize journal inclusion in PubMed. The NLM Director can make their own decisions and reject the advice of the consultants, without having to bother with overhauling a committee’s membership and the unpredictability of members."
Best wishes,
Margaret Winker
Margaret Winker, MD
eLearning Program Director
Trustee
World Association of Medical Editors
***
wame.org
WAME eLearning Program <https://wame.org/wame-elearning-program.php>
@WAME_editors
www.facebook.com/WAMEmembers
HIFA profile: Margaret Winker is Trustee and Past President of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and Director of the WAME eLearning Program. She is based in the US. Professional interests: WAME is a global association of editors of peer-reviewed medical journals who seek to foster cooperation and communication among editors, improve editorial standards, promote professionalism in medical editing through education, self-criticism, and self-regulation, and encourage research on the principles and practice of medical editing. margaretwinker AT gmail.com
[*Note from HIFA moderator (NPW): Thank you Margaret. I have included this message in our open access discussion as PMC (PubMed Central) is clearly a very important benefit of open access publishing.]