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Funding Support (Grant) Information in MEDLINE/PubMed
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Articles cited in MEDLINE/PubMed receive funding from a variety of sources. Article citations are tagged with funding support information. The chart below shows the number of articles funded per publication year for various funding support categories. Click on the first column category name to run the search in PubMed; in the searches, [gr] = Grant Number; [pt] = Publication Type; and [dp] = date of publication.

Funding Support for Articles Cited in MEDLINE/PubMed

Funding Support Category Total Number of Articles* Articles Published in 2019** Articles Published in 2018 Articles Published in 2017 Articles Published in 2016
Public Health Service (PHS) Support 3,033,161 127,853 123,778 131,889 142,715
PHS Support in PMC (PubMed Central)*** 1,457,530 84,698 77,769 114,866 124,309
Percentage of PHS Supported Articles in PMC 48% 66% 63% 87% 87%
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Support 2,057 38 44 25 85
N.I.H. Extramural Support**** 2,668,869 123,602 117,657 124,970 134,673
N.I.H. Intramural Support 75,442 4,774 4,043 4,341 5,229
NIH Support 2,718,867 123,981 120,043 127,836 138,079
NIH Support in PMC 1,403,853 83,054 76,131 112,577 121,751
Percentage of NIH Supported Articles in PMC 52% 67% 63% 88% 88%
Percentage of PHS Support from NIH 90% 97% 97% 97% 97%
United States Government, non-PHS Support 860,441 31,695 27,673 26,857 34,179
Non-United States Government Support 7,597,984 335,297 262,044 235,951 345,453
*The strategies were revised and rerun for all the publication years. Counts in this table were made on September 1, 2020. Numbers change on a daily basis.
**Numbers from the most recent year may be underestimated due to publication cycles and processing times. One article may be counted twice in different publication years; for example, if it was published online first in one year and then included in a print issue in another year.
***These numbers are not intended to represent compliance with the NIH Public Access policy. Citations for embargoed PubMed Central articles are not included in these counts. The embargo period is a delay, of up to 12 months, from the publication date to when the full-text article is made available in PubMed Central.
****Slightly under-reported because citations also having Intramural NIH support are excluded.

The counts in the chart above only include citations where grant information is readily available.

Data on funding support by publication years from 2007 to the present are available in text (.csv) format.

Searching for Funding Support Information

To search for articles funded by a particular organization, search the Grant field for the institute acronym or the name of the organization found on this page (Archived). For example, the following search will find research funded by the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases:

NCEZID[gr]

This search will find research funded by the Wellcome Trust:

"Wellcome Trust"[gr]

This search will find research funded by the National Cancer Institute:

(NIH [gr] OR Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural [pt] OR Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural [pt]) AND nci [gr]

For help with more specific funding support search strategies, contact NLM.

Background Information

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) tracks funding information using two data elements: Grant Number and Publication Type.

Grant Number [gr]

  1. Since 1981, NLM has included research grant numbers or contract numbers or both that designate financial support by any agency of the United States Public Health Service (PHS) which also includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The numbers are carried in the NLM journal citation as published in the literature with no standardization except for the prefix portion where the number zero (not the letter O) and the number one (not the letter l) should be present, for example: R01, not ROl. A computer algorithm scans the grant number to isolate the 2-letter grant code and then adds the agency/instituted acronym to the citation. The expanded data are only as dependable as the original source string; some mislabeling of the supporting institution may occur. Initially, only up to three grant numbers were included; that limitation was lifted in 2000.
  2. Since 2006, NLM has added grant information derived from PMC and PubMed My NCBI as result of the NIH Public Access Policy. As a result, grant data may now exist on citations to articles published prior to 1981. The corresponding PT value (see below), however, is not added to the citation when the grant element comes from PMC or PubMed My NCBI association.

Publication Type [pt]

The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®), which is used by the National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) to describe the content of journal articles for MEDLINE®, includes Publication Types to identify financial support of the research that resulted in the published papers when that support is mentioned in the articles:

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't (since 1975)
Research Support, American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (since 2010)
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. (since 1975)
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S. (since 1975)
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural (since 2005)
Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural (since 2005)

More Information about Funding Support in PubMed

Last Reviewed: September 1, 2020