Because of Trump: Central Medical Library builds alternative to US database

The German National Library of Medicine (ZB Med) has announced its intention to create an "open, reliable and sustainable alternative" to the PubMed database. This is one of the most important and comprehensive resources for biomedical literature worldwide. The meta-database with references to relevant articles and over 38 million citations is operated by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA. The ZB Med is responding to concerns that the US government under Donald Trump is cutting funding for the NIH. There are also fears that political influences could compromise the scientific integrity of PubMed.

The Republicans under President Trump are restructuring research in the USA and cutting funding. World-class research clusters could disappear as a result. As a central specialist library for medicine, healthcare, nutritional, environmental and agricultural sciences, ZB Med therefore wants to "prepare for the worst". In view of the risks posed by dependence on US-based information services, it is necessary to strengthen the resilience of the life sciences research infrastructure in Europe. The PubMed alternative should offer "as seamless a replacement as possible in the event of restrictions in the availability" of the original. The aim is also to replicate the familiar search interface.

PubMed provides access to a large amount of scientific information that is of crucial importance for research, clinical practice and public health. A key milestone for the long-term availability of the specialist medical information it contains has already been reached, writes the Cologne library, which acts as an information center for the life sciences: the current contents of PubMed have been secured and are accessible via the ZB Med's Livivo search portal.

Preparing for the worst case scenario

According to the library, the next step is to back up the relevant data several times and clarify the legal framework, data processing workflows and compatibility with existing PubMed data formats. Automatic processes would be used to enrich metadata such as Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and software components would be developed as open source.

As PubMed is not just a simple database, the ZB Med wants to initiate "further development steps for the worst-case scenario of shutdown" as part of the project. This includes the development and provision of a programming interface (API), the integration of additional sources and the maintenance and expansion of MeSH. The German Research Foundation (DFG) offers funding opportunities for this. ZB Med is currently writing the application for an initial project that partners can support. The plan is to provide a "technical and administrative framework for continuous expansion" through new publications. Initial online meetings and workshops have been scheduled to involve the scientific communities.

(wpl)