What part of Pubmed can I find on Embase?

While the Embase platform includes, next to the EMBASE collection, nearly each item from the MEDLINE collection (only 25 journals are excluded-find the list here), this does not mean that you’ll find everything from Pubmed.

This overview shows the overlapping parts:

So, what is in Pubmed beside MEDLINE?

MEDLINE and PubMed have significant differences:

1. MEDLINE is a database of article citations from journals approved by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It contains over 31 million references to articles published in biomedical and life sciences journals since 1946. The journals are reviewed by the NLM’s Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC), which evaluates the scientific quality of the content, including its originality and relevance to the global MEDLINE audience. What sets MEDLINE apart from the rest of PubMed is its use of the NLM’s controlled vocabulary, the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), for indexing the citations.
2. PubMed, on the other hand, is a broader platform that encompasses MEDLINE. It includes over 36 million references, including:

   • In-process citations, which are records of articles before they are indexed with MeSH or converted to out-of-scope status.
   • Citations from out-of-scope articles (e.g., covering plate tectonics or astrophysics) from certain MEDLINE journals, where only life sciences articles are indexed with MeSH.
   • “Ahead of Print” citations that precede the final publication of an article in a MEDLINE-indexed journal.
   • Citations predating the selection date of a journal for MEDLINE indexing (when provided electronically by the publisher).
   • Citations prior to 1966 that have not yet been updated with current MeSH terms and converted to MEDLINE status.
   • Citations from other life sciences journals that submit full text to PubMed Central (PMC) and undergo qualitative review by the NLM.
   • Citations from manuscripts of articles published by NIH-funded researchers.
   • Citations for most books available on the NCBI Bookshelf (one citation for the book and, in some cases, each chapter of the book).

In summary, MEDLINE constitutes the largest part of PubMed and is more tightly controlled. You can narrow your searches in PubMed to MEDLINE citations using the controlled MeSH vocabulary or by using the MEDLINE filter for journal categories.

But… why is ‘Pubmed-not-Medline’ not containing all the rest of Pubmed?

“PubMed-not-MEDLINE” records fall into one of the following categories:

• Journals Included in MEDLINE: These records come from journals that are part of MEDLINE but do not have MeSH headings assigned. This could be because the cited item is not within the scope of MEDLINE (either by topic or publication date).
• Non-MEDLINE Journals: These records have also undergone quality review but are not part of the MEDLINE subset. They may come from journals that cover topics outside the scope of MEDLINE or from non-MEDLINE journals.

Only the first category is the one you can find on the Embase platform (as described here), but NOT the second.