ince 1975 it has been NLM^® practice to add certain research support MeSH headings to MEDLINE^® citations that indicate the source of grant funding and financial support.

Two new research support headings have been introduced to 2005 MeSH mid-year, effective for journal citations indexed with MeSH as of June 2, 2005. They are:

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

This heading is applied when support from an NIH grant is acknowledged in an article. A specific NIH grant number (or more than one number) is/are frequently acknowledged in the article (and the grant numbers are also entered for MEDLINE/PubMed^® in the Grant Number (GR) field). If the article acknowledges support from NIH, without indicating a grant number or any other more specific information, this heading is still applied. When this heading is applied, the heading Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S. is also applied.

Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural

This new heading is applied only when there is an explicit acknowledgement in the article to the effect, "supported by the Intramural Research Program of NIH." NLM staff do not examine the author affiliation for clues about NIH authors. No other research support heading is applied, including Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

The application of these new headings to MEDLINE citations is primarily being done to support the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access initiative. The NIH Public Access plan is meant to make the published results of NIH-funded research freely available to everyone. This plan encourages those who receive NIH grant funding or those who work at NIH to deposit their author manuscripts that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal into PubMed Central^®.

The two new research support headings described above join the three existing research support tags:

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

This heading is applied whenever an article acknowledges grant or financial support from any US Public Health Service (PHS) agency. The eight PHS agencies include:

NIH	National Institutes of Health
FDA	Food and Drug Administration
CDC	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
ATSDR	Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
IHS	Indian Health Service
HRSA	Health Resources and Services Administration
SAMHSA	Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
AHRQ	Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

More information about PHS components may be found at:
//www.hhs.gov/about/whatwedo.html/.

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

This heading is applied when funding support is acknowledged from any US government agency other than PHS. This might include the National Science Foundation, NASA, Department of Energy, etc.

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

This heading is applied when funding support is acknowledged from any non-US government agency. This might include state and local governments, foreign governments, and private organizations or foundations, such as the Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, American Cancer Society, etc.

Searching Implications for 2005
For prospective citations, the new research support headings provide an easy way to retrieve all citations where the authors acknowledge NIH support, regardless of the particular Institute(s) involved. The two new headings separate out the extramural from the intramural slant. To get all NIH supported research simply OR the two new headings together.

Keep in mind that Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural is not considered part of the larger Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S. heading because that latter heading is defined in terms of extramural (i.e., grant) support.

Remember that the new headings are effective for citations indexed with MeSH as of June 2, 2005 forward.

At this time 2006 MeSH is still under development. NLM expects to make changes for 2006 MeSH which are likely to affect research support searching and will be explained in a forthcoming article.

Related Grant Number Enhancement
When an author acknowledges that the research was supported by financial support from the Wellcome Trust, that information is now entered into the MEDLINE citation in the Grant Number (GR) field. The organization name is typically cited without a specific grant number. The corresponding MeSH heading for Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't is also added. The Wellcome Trust information is entered only when there is acknowledgement of financial support, and not if the Wellcome Trust is mentioned in some other way, such as in an author affiliation or address. This change is also effective only for prospective citations indexed with MeSH as of June 2, 2005 forward. Just as the various institutes of the NIH can be searched in the Grant Number field, now Wellcome Trust can be searched as well:

nci [gr]

niaid [gr]

wellcome trust [gr]

By Lou Wave S. Knecht
Bibliographic Services Division
and
James Marcetich
Index Section

Knecht LS, Marcetich J. New Research Support MeSH® Headings Introduced mid-Year to 2005 MeSH® . NLM Tech Bull. 2005 May-Jun;(344):e12.