This project involves indexing of biomedical journals for Index Medicus and MEDLINE, using the policies and procedures detailed in the MEDLARS Indexing Manual, the Automated Indexing and Management System Manual and various technical memoranda. The majority of these articles are in English, Russian, German, French, Japanese, Italian and Spanish. Subject areas include medicine, biochemistry, veterinary medicine, physiology, immunology, parasitology and pharmacology. The indexing process involves the intellectual analysis of biomedical journal articles for subject content and the application of appropriate subject headings drawn from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Indexers also translate foreign language titles and transliterature the authors and titles of journal articles that are in certain non-Roman scripts. All indexers must have been trained by NLM. Most indexing will be performed online, using the interactive online indexing system, which provides validations against the MeSH vocabulary file, various indexing rules and a dictionary file for terms in titles and abstracts. Contract indexers will use government-supplied terminals and modems to dial into the NLM online indexing system. Contract indexers must process work in a timely manner, returning completed journals within one week of receipt, in order to meet the Index Section's goals for currency of citations in Index Medicus and MEDLINE.
