FAIRsharing record for: Medical Subject Headings

This FAIRsharing record describes: The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary produced by the National Library of Medicine and used for indexing, cataloging, and searching for biomedical and health-related information and documents. MeSH includes the subject descriptors appearing in MEDLINE®/PubMed® and other NLM databases. MeSH provides a consistent way to find content with different terminology but the same concepts. Many synonyms, near-synonyms, and closely related concepts are included as entry terms to help users find the most relevant MeSH descriptor for the concept they are seeking. In NLM's online databases, many terms entered by searchers are automatically mapped to MeSH descriptors to facilitate retrieval of relevant information. Various online systems provide access to MeSH and the vocabulary is available in several NLM online systems. These include the MeSH Browser, containing the complete contents of the MeSH vocabulary; the MeSH Entrez databases, which are designed to assist those searching MEDLINE®/PubMed®; and the UMLS Metathesaurus® with links to many other controlled vocabularies. MeSH Records contain three types: Descriptors, Qualifiers, and Supplementary Concept Records (SCRs).