title: A MEDLINE categorization algorithm.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Categorization is designed to enhance resource description by organizing content description so as to enable the reader to grasp quickly and easily what are the main topics discussed in it. The objective of this work is to propose a categorization algorithm to classify a set of scientific articles indexed with the MeSH thesaurus, and in particular those of the MEDLINE bibliographic database. In a large bibliographic database such as MEDLINE, finding materials of particular interest to a specialty group, or relevant to a particular audience, can be difficult. The categorization refines the retrieval of indexed material. In the CISMeF terminology, metaterms can be considered as super-concepts. They were primarily conceived to improve recall in the CISMeF quality-controlled health gateway.
  
  
  METHODS
  The MEDLINE categorization algorithm (MCA) is based on semantic links existing between MeSH terms and metaterms on the one hand and between MeSH subheadings and metaterms on the other hand. These links are used to automatically infer a list of metaterms from any MeSH term/subheading indexing. Medical librarians manually select the semantic links.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The MEDLINE categorization algorithm lists the medical specialties relevant to a MEDLINE file by decreasing order of their importance. The MEDLINE categorization algorithm is available on a Web site. It can run on any MEDLINE file in a batch mode. As an example, the top 3 medical specialties for the set of 60 articles published in BioMed Central Medical Informatics & Decision Making, which are currently indexed in MEDLINE are: information science, organization and administration and medical informatics.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We have presented a MEDLINE categorization algorithm in order to classify the medical specialties addressed in any MEDLINE file in the form of a ranked list of relevant specialties. The categorization method introduced in this paper is based on the manual indexing of resources with MeSH (terms/subheadings) pairs by NLM indexers. This algorithm may be used as a new bibliometric tool.
authors.affiliation: CISMeF, Rouen University Hospital, 76031 Rouen, France. stefan.darmoni@chu-rouen.fr
authors.forename: Stefan J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Darmoni
authors.forename: Aurelie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Névéol
authors.forename: Jean-Marie
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Renard
authors.forename: Jean-Francois
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Gehanno
authors.forename: Lina F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Soualmia
authors.forename: Badisse
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dahamna
authors.forename: Benoit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Thirion
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D000465:Algorithms; D015706:Bibliometrics; D005602:France; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D007993:Libraries, Medical; D016239:MEDLINE; D046650:Medical Subject Headings; D008511:Medicine / Q000145:classification*; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D012660:Semantics; D013038:Specialization; D009626:Terminology as Topic