Objective In 2002, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) introduced semi-automated indexing of Medline using the Medical Text Indexer (MTI). In 2021, NLM announced that it would fully automate its indexing in Medline with an improved MTI by mid-2022. This pilot study examines indexing using a sample of records in Medline from 2000, and how an early, public version of MTI's outputs compares to records created by human indexers. Methods This pilot study examines twenty Medline records from 2000, a year before the MTI was introduced as a MeSH term recommender. We identified twenty higher- and lower-impact biomedical journals based on Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and examined the indexing of papers by feeding their PubMed records into the Interactive MTI tool. Results In the sample, we found key differences between automated and human-indexed Medline records: MTI assigned more terms and used them more accurately for citations in the higher JIF group, and MTI tended to rank the Male check tag more highly than the Female check tag and to omit Aged check tags. Sometimes MTI chose more specific terms than human indexers but was inconsistent in applying specificity principles. Conclusion NLM's transition to fully automated indexing of the biomedical literature could introduce or perpetuate inconsistencies and biases in Medline. Librarians and searchers should assess changes to index terms, and their impact on PubMed's mapping features for a range of topics. Future research should evaluate automated indexing as it pertains to finding clinical information effectively, and in performing systematic searches.

中文翻译：

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使用 NLM 的医学文本索引器 (MTI) 进行自动索引与 Medline 中的人工索引进行比较：一项试点研究。

目标 2002 年，国家医学图书馆 (NLM) 使用医学文本索引器 (MTI) 引入了 Medline 半自动索引。2021 年，NLM 宣布将在 2022 年中期之前通过改进的 MTI 完全自动化 Medline 中的索引编制。这项试点研究使用 Medline 2000 年以来的记录样本来检查索引编制，以及 MTI 输出的早期公共版本与人类索引员创建的记录的比较。方法 这项试点研究检查了 2000 年（MTI 被引入作为 MeSH 术语推荐器的一年前）的 20 条 Medline 记录。我们根据期刊影响因子 (JIF) 确定了 20 种影响力较高和较低的生物医学期刊，并通过将其 PubMed 记录输入 Interactive MTI 工具来检查论文的索引。结果 在样本中，我们发现自动索引的 Medline 记录与人工索引的 Medline 记录之间的关键差异：MTI 分配了更多术语，并更准确地将它们用于较高 JIF 组中的引用，并且 MTI 倾向于将男性检查标签排名高于女性检查标签标签并省略老化检查标签。有时，MTI 选择比人类索引器更具体的术语，但在应用特异性原则方面不一致。结论 NLM 向生物医学文献全自动索引的转变可能会在 Medline 中引入或延续不一致和偏见。图书馆员和检索者应评估索引术语的更改及其对 PubMed 一系列主题的映射功能的影响。未来的研究应该评估自动索引，因为它涉及有效查找临床信息以及执行系统搜索。