Recent political developments in the United States have raised concerns about the continued accessibility of scientific information in databases. The databases use a controlled vocabulary for indexing articles. Due to reports of a so-called “list of banned words” - see for example the list on PEN America - there is concern that certain terms are being removed from the controlled vocabulary. This could seriously hamper the findability of relevant scientific publications. Information specialists from the various faculties are closely monitoring the situation and monitoring the accessibility and completeness of information in these databases as closely as possible.
These include databases such as PubMed, GreenFILE and ERIC. See, for example, Medical Contact and the message from the ERIC help desk (below). For the time being, Radboud University has no indications that things have changed in these databases. The Library Information Points of our university check with frequent samples whether the corresponding search terms are still in the controlled vocabulary of these databases and whether certain ‘controversial’ articles are still findable in them. Do you notice anything striking? Contact the Library Information Point of your faculty.
More on PubMed
There are also reports circulating about possible loss of publications in PubMed, coupled with the advice to switch to Europe PMC, a European counterpart of PubMed. The latter seems unnecessary for the time being: the difference in number of publications found when searching on transgender AND sexual health has to do with a different way of searching, i.e. in title/abstract in PubMed and in full text in Europe PMC. Europe PMC contains many more publications than PubMed or Medline (Ovid).
More on ERIC
From the helpdesk of the database ERIC came the following message in March 2025:
"The Department of Education is working with the Department of Government Efficiency to "reduce overall Federal spending" and "reallocate spending to promote efficiency" (EO 14222). As a result, the number of records added to the ERIC collection will be significantly reduced going forward. The number of actively cataloged sources will be reduced by approximately 45% starting April 24, 2025. Subject matter was not considered during the process to identify which sources would be made inactive. Please note that all records currently in ERIC will remain available."
This crowd-sourced Google Doc (not official) contains the well-known journals that are no longer indexed. You will also find copies of emails sent from the help desk and to journals.
More on Web of Science
This database does not index articles and is not subsidized by government funds. Nevertheless, we monitor whether information disappears. This could happen, for example, when certain journals are excluded.