MEDLINE/PubMed Baseline Statistics: Element Counts and Lengths, 2002-2023

MEDLINE/PubMed annual statistical reports detail the content and size of data elements within the biomedical literature database. The reports include counts of citations and element occurrences, plus minimum, average, and maximum values for occurrences and lengths per record. The data is provided by datadiscovery.nlm.nih.gov and was last updated on June 18, 2025.

Use Cases

• Analyze metadata element frequency and distribution using Element Name, Citations, and Occurrences.
• Model average record size and complexity using Avg Occurs, Avg Len, and Max Len.
• Identify outliers in element usage by comparing Min Occurs and Max Occurs across different years.
• Benchmark metadata field lengths for database schema design using Min Len, Avg Len, and Max Len.

Strengths

• Reports cover a long time range, with data available from 2002 to 2023.
• Provides multiple statistical measures (min, avg, max) for both occurrences and lengths of elements.
• Data is available in multiple machine-readable formats including CSV, JSON, XML, and RDF.

Limitations

• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

datadiscovery.nlm.nih.gov

Collection Method

Annual statistical reports generated from the baseline versions of the MEDLINE/PubMed database.

Time Range

2002-2023

Freshness

Last updated 2025-06-18 21:08:40.