This chart will help you compare databases with information about content coverage, indexing, and access availability between popular databases.
| PubMed | MEDLINE | PubMed Central (PMC) | European PMC | Embase | Scopus | |
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What It Is |
Publicly funded biomedical database from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). |
A core component of PubMed. The NLM's journal citation database includes journals that have met selection criteria by the NIH-chartered advisory committee. It is also available as a subscription database. Miner Library subscribes to Ovid Medline. |
PMC serves as a digital counterpart to the NLM extensive print journal collection; it is a repository for journal literature deposited by participating publishers and for author manuscripts submitted in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy and similar policies of other research funding agencies. Some PMC journals are also MEDLINE journals. | Europe PMC is hosted by EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), an international, innovative, and interdisciplinary research organization that aims to make the world’s public biological data freely available to the scientific community. Europe PMC is partnered with PubMed Central (PMC). | An Elsevier biomedical database focusing on drugs and pharmacology, medical devices, and clinical medicine. | An Elsevier multidisciplinary database including science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities. |
| Coverage |
More than 38 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. Back to 1966 and selectively to 1809. PubMed facilitates searching across MEDLINE, PMC, and Bookshelf. |
More than 31 million references. Records are indexed with NLM Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). From 1966 to the present, select coverage before 1966. Citations for more than 5,200 worldwide journals in about 40 languages. |
More than 10 million full-text article records spanning several centuries of biomedical and life science research (late 1700s to present). Content includes articles that have been formally published in a scholarly journal, author manuscripts that have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in a journal, and preprint versions of articles that have been made public before peer review. |
Over 45 million abstracts and 10 million full-text articles, including research articles, preprints, micropublications, books, reviews, and protocols. Europe PMC integrates content from a range of sources such as PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Agricola, and 34 life science preprint servers including biorxiv, Research Square, and Preprints.org |
Embase journal coverage is from 1947 on with historical records included in Embase Classic. 45.6 million records and over 12 million records not in MEDLINE. 3,365 journals unique to Embase and 8,451 currently published journals, including MEDLINE titles. 5.1 million conference abstracts from 15,577 conferences. |
Over 90 million records dating back to 1788. Over 2 million preprints. The bulk of the content on Scopus is peer-reviewed journals, which are selected according to content coverage policy. Over 5,500 peer-reviewed titles are full open access titles |
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Indexing |
Medline-indexed articles, plus preprints.
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Medline-index articles. |
No controlled vocabulary.
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MeSH terms are assigned to most PubMed records, not Europe PMC full text.
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Emtree is the controlled vocabulary..
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No controlled vocabulary. |
| Subject Coverage | Medicine, health fields, and related disciplines include life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering. |
Biomedicine and health. Broadly defined to encompass those areas of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering needed by health professionals and others engaged in basic research and clinical care, public health, health policy development, or related educational activities. |
Full-text biomedical and life sciences. |
Europe PMC contains all of the PubMed abstracts, the vast majority of PMC content, plus additional content, including preprints, micropublications, patents, NHS clinical guidelines, and Agricola records. |
Subject coverage includes Medline, drug, and, pharmacy journals.
Embase has more of an international focus than PubMed, and also has greater coverage for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. |
Covers over 330 disciplines with comprehensive coverage of scientific, technical, medical, and social science literature. |
| Availability | Free | Subscription | Free | Free | Subscription | Subscription |
Acknowledgment
Adapted and remixed with permission from Women and Newborn Health Service Library. Research: What's the Difference between PubMed, Medline, and Embase? Accessed March 7, 2025.