In addition, UK PubMed Central provides a gateway to a wealth of unique additional content and innovative features which specifically support the UK researcher’s information requirements.
What is different about UK PubMed Central?
It is not just about the range of literature available, currently 23,661,932 items (as at 22.06.2010), it is also the clarity and ease of use of the interface, the innovative and practical features available to you, and the links to potentially relevant sources of information which have been peer-reviewed and quality-assessed, that make UKPMC unique.
Additional content
As well as access to the entire content of PubMed, UKPMC offers links to additional content sets and databases. You can download more than 2,700 National Health Service clinical guidelines; search for almost 2 million patents; and look-up more than 20,000 PhD theses. For those with an interest in agriculture, UKPMC even offers access to Agricola, the United States Agricultural Library database.
An Interface and functionality developed in consultation with the research community
All our developments have been undertaken following iterative, collaborative consultation with biomedical and health researchers from across the UK. Through focus groups, workshops, online surveys and face-to-face consultations we have developed an interface that is intuitive, clear and easy to navigate.
Practical features and tools to support your research
As you search UKPMC, you can record all your searches. collate and email search results, and export citations into reference management software (RIS export format is supported). Other relevant articles are automatically highlighted as you search, and you can also broaden or narrow your search to other articles using our MESH subject indexing.
A breadcrumb trail: taking you to further relevant, peer-reviewed sources of information
When you find a research article of interest, and click through to it, UKPMC may also provide you with links, where available, to other sources of information gleaned from terms found within abstracts or the full text of articles you have downloaded. You can tick checkboxes to highlight key terms such as – Gene Ontology; Genes/ Proteins; Species – or you can also link to further sources of information such as biological entities, or to papers cited by the article (and, when available, also find out who has cited the article).
It is our aim to improve the UKPMC Beta service so it benefits you and your research needs. We welcome any feedback you may have. Please email us at or click the feedback button on our website.
Author: Paul Davey
