title: A search engine to access PubMed monolingual subsets: proof of concept and evaluation in French.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  PubMed contains numerous articles in languages other than English. However, existing solutions to access these articles in the language in which they were written remain unconvincing.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to propose a practical search engine, called Multilingual PubMed, which will permit access to a PubMed subset in 1 language and to evaluate the precision and coverage for the French version (Multilingual PubMed-French).
  
  
  METHODS
  To create this tool, translations of MeSH were enriched (eg, adding synonyms and translations in French) and integrated into a terminology portal. PubMed subsets in several European languages were also added to our database using a dedicated parser. The response time for the generic semantic search engine was evaluated for simple queries. BabelMeSH, Multilingual PubMed-French, and 3 different PubMed strategies were compared by searching for literature in French. Precision and coverage were measured for 20 randomly selected queries. The results were evaluated as relevant to title and abstract, the evaluator being blind to search strategy.
  
  
  RESULTS
  More than 650,000 PubMed citations in French were integrated into the Multilingual PubMed-French information system. The response times were all below the threshold defined for usability (2 seconds). Two search strategies (Multilingual PubMed-French and 1 PubMed strategy) showed high precision (0.93 and 0.97, respectively), but coverage was 4 times higher for Multilingual PubMed-French.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It is now possible to freely access biomedical literature using a practical search tool in French. This tool will be of particular interest for health professionals and other end users who do not read or query sufficiently in English. The information system is theoretically well suited to expand the approach to other European languages, such as German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Portuguese.
authors.affiliation: CISMeF, TIBS, LITIS EA 4108, Rouen University Hospital, Normandy, Rouen, France. nicolas.griffon@chu-rouen.fr.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9602-6429
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Griffon
authors.forename: Matthieu
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-4560
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schuers
authors.forename: Lina Fatima
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7668-2819
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Soualmia
authors.forename: Julien
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7446-644X
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Grosjean
authors.forename: Gaétan
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5803-5554
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kerdelhué
authors.forename: Ivan
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4217-3677
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kergourlay
authors.forename: Badisse
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0762-2518
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dahamna
authors.forename: Stéfan Jacques
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7162-318X
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Darmoni
mesh_terms: D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D007802:Language; D046650:Medical Subject Headings; D039781:PubMed / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057386:Search Engine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: French language; PubMed; databases, bibliographic; information storage and retrieval; search engine; user-computer interface