"Thesaurus for Medical and Health Related Terms" and it's application for indexing

Abstract

"Ichu-Shi Web" is the database that contains bibliographic citations and abstracts from more than 2,500 biomedical journals and other serial publications published in Japan. It was started in 2000. The number of citations is more than 300,000 per year and now exceeds 6.5 million. Trained indexers attach descriptors (controlled keywords) that are relevant to the subject contents of each article, based on the "Thesaurus for Medical and Health-Related Terms (lchu-Shi Thesaurus)". We have edited and published the thesaurus as a tool for indexing and searching since 1983. The 6th edition based on the US National Library of Medicines Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) 2005 has been published in January 2007. It contains 25,317 descriptors and more than 300,000 synonyms that are connected with each other (mapping) in the thesaurus management system. Using the system, indexers can easily find descriptors suitable to the article. Furthermore "Ichu-Shi Web" automatically performs descriptors search using a mapping feature, without referencing the thesaurus in advance. Here we described the current indexing rules of the Ichu-Shi Thesaurus and the indexing support function, a part of the total Ichu-Shi database processing system, which has been newly developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]