Strengths
- Controlled vocabulary for medical field
- Established and stable resource for almost 50 years
- As the backbone of MEDLINE®, MeSH continues to remain the strongest and most widely used medical research tool
- The hierarchical tree structure enables the indexer and searcher to employ the most specific term available, while also being able to maneuver up and down the tree structure, accessing both broader and more specific terms
- The same concept can be searched using multiple approaches
- Users can rely on See references, instead of generating their own synonyms
Weaknesses
- Terms are only updated annually; articles and resources published with new terminology before new MeSH terms are created are not accessible using current MeSH vocabulary. Medical research rapidly develops, thus, cutting edge medical information is not readily available to researchers who use the MeSH vocabulary.
- Only text-formatted information can be indexed and assigned MeSH vocabulary. Charts, graphs, formats, sampling methods, and structures are examples of information that cannot be incorporated into MeSH. Frequenty, this is exactly what the researcher is seeking and it cannot be easily found.
- The reputation of MeSH is suffering because some researchers are performing quick searches of databases, without consulting MeSH vocabulary, returning less than optimal results.
- Experiences differ between use of the printed MeSH tree structure and the online tree structure. Using the printed MeSH tree structure produces the most accurate representation of available information. Problems exist with the online MeSH tool.
- Outdated terms, such as “validity” and “reliability”, need to be replaced with more widely accepted terminology, such as “accuracy” and “homogeneity”.
Sources
- Gault, L. V., M. Shultz., and K. J. Davies. (2002). Variations in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) mapping: from the natural language of patron terms to the controlled vocabulary of mapped lists. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 90(2), 173-180. (Web Resource)
- Michel, P., E. Mouillet, and L. R. Salmi. (2006). Comparison of Medical Subject Headings and standard terminology regarding performance of diagnostic tests. Medical Library Association. 94(2), 221-223. (Web Resource)
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Coletti, M. H., and H. L. Bleich. (2001). Medical Subject Headings used to search the biomedical literature. Journal of the Medical Information Association. 8(4), 317-323. (Web Resource)
