PubMed, global users and sources of health and medical information on the Internet
Thanks to you, I have a better sense of the groups and status. It is difficult to track all Internet activities. But more and more groups and individuals are trying.
No matter things like MESH or NLM or NIH are large relative to one person, they are still small and changeable relative to states or countries. Or some topics and industries.
It is easy to download a list of terms and see if they are used on one page, one site, the whole Internet, and see if that search term can be used. Translating the list of terms from one human language to another is no more difficult than maintaining a list of aliases and statistics and logs related to usage and cases,
But from going through this, I am certain the real issue is the value of PubMed itself. As open data is more used, groups begin to realize that it is not whether people copy for their own use, but that when people share copies they give credit to the source of the content, and stable pathways so readers and users can contact, interact with, give credit or blame to the authors and source groups.
I put “Pubmed” higher on my list of systems to trace and map, to try to improve. I am just one person. I doubt I have more than a few hundred followers, and a few hundred regular correspondents. But in my remaining years, I am going to try to apply what I have spent a lifetime learning, to see if I can make “small” things like PubMed, all medical terms, all health related materials on the Internet a bit more understandable and usable as a whole.
Thank you for your feedback and suggestions.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
