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Vokabular: Medical Subject Headings | MeSH

Controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences.

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Basic information

Properties
(P34)?Naming:	Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
(P1266)?Abbreviation:	MeSH
(P724)?Digest:	MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity. MeSH descriptors are arranged in both an alphabetic and a hierarchical structure. At the most general level of the hierarchical structure are very broad headings such as 'Anatomy' or 'Mental Disorders'. More specific headings are found at more narrow levels of the twelve-level hierarchy, such as 'Ankle' and 'Conduct Disorder'. There are 26.142 descriptors in 2011 MeSH. There are also over 177.000 entry terms that assist in finding the most appropriate MeSH Heading, for example, 'Vitamin C' is an entry term to 'Ascorbic Acid'. In addition to these headings, there are more than 199,000 headings called Supplementary Concept Records (formerly Supplementary Chemical Records) within a separate thesaurus. The MeSH thesaurus is used by NLM for indexing articles from 5.400 of the world's leading biomedical journals for the MEDLINE/PubMED database. It is also used for the NLM-produced database that includes cataloging of books, documents, and audiovisuals acquired by the Library. Each bibliographic reference is associated with a set of MeSH terms that describe the content of the item. Similarly, search queries use MeSH vocabulary to find items on a desired topic.
(P887)?URL:	https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/query
(P121)?Genre classification:	Classification/Taxonomy, Authority file, System of categories
(P15)?Medientyp:	Online resource, Electronic publication
(P608)?Field of knowledge:	Medicine, Pathology
(P936)?Object types:	Pathology
(P984)?Object type properties:	Classification/Taxonomy, Name variant, definition, description

Number of integrated items

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(P613)?Number of integrated items:	30.000 Standard designation(s)

Contact

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(P845)?Creator:	Bethesda (Md.): N. L. Medicine
(P518)?Technically realized by:	Bethesda (Md.): N. L. Medicine
(P206)?Publisher:	Bethesda (Md.): N. L. Medicine
(P153)?Postal address:	U.S. National Library of Medicine | 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda MD | 20894 | United States
(P722)?Email address:	https://www.nlm.nih.gov/

Methodology

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(P280)?Variant:	Data curation, Entity recognition, Identification and matching, Standardization
(P575)?Design features:	Standardized vocabulary with rules that can only be changed by an authorized committee
(P902)?Methodology:	Based on current technical terms, The technical terms have a theoretical concept
(P15)?Media type:	Online resource, Electronic publication
(P1000)?Organisational structure:	Changes can only be made by professional administrators
(P999)?Sustainability:	The project is long-term, permanently supported by an organization
(P942)?Number of hierarchy levels:	5
(P900)?Completeness:	Completeness is the goal

Version

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(P18)?Language:	English
(P1152)?Date of first publication:	2007
(P222)?Date of publication:	2025
(P939)?Versioning:	Versioning takes place at the level of all individual components/items

Cross concordances

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(P898)?External matching:	—
(P573)?Target group:	Library, Research project, Researcher

Documentation

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(P382)?Specifications:	documentation - URL: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/introduction.html
(P978)?External tutorial:	Tutorial - URL: https://learn.nlm.nih.gov/documentation/training-packets/T000101112/
(P180)?License:	CC0 1.0 Universal

Provision of data

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(P940)?Technology:	HTML, RDF database
(P125)?Status of possesio:	Complete download possible, Search results partially visible in online interface
(P15)?Media type:	Online resource, Electronic publication
(P937)?Referencing method:	Classifying identifier(s), Uniform Resource Identifier
(P903)?Data format:	RDF/SKOS-XML
(P923)?API endpoint URL:	https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/swagger/ui
(P941)?SPARQL endpoint URL:	http://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/sparql
(P995)?Services offered:	—
(P950)?Cite as:	National Library of Medicine, Medical Subject Headings, Rockville Pike 2025, URL: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html

Dataset editing

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(P1302)?Dataset editing:	—