Since 1975, HealthStar has included author-written abstracts from journals whose publishers gave the NLM permission for their use. These abstracts appear in the Abstract (AB) field. Over 50% of the documents in Ovid HealthSTAR contain abstracts.

The abstract index contains all searchable words from the abstract.

The Abbreviated Source (AS) field includes a display of all the basic information needed to locate a citation, including the Journal Name (JN) abbreviation or Monograph Publisher (PB), the Issue/Part (IP), Page (PG), Volume (VO), and Year of Publication (YR).

The Authors (AU) field contains up to twenty-five authors and investigators. The format for authors is last name followed by one or more initials: Smith JC or Smith J.

Enter the last name, or if it is a common name, enter the last name and first initial. If you are unsure of the spelling of the last name (macdonald or mcdonald), enter one version and then scroll through the list of names to find the other.

The Author Last Name (AX) index allows you to search for the authors’ last names. Author names display in Authors (AU) and Authors Full Name (FA) fields.

The Comments (CM) field contains an indication that the article either contains a comment on another article or is commented on in another article. The CM field begins with the indication "Comment On" or "Comment In" and then displays a journal abbreviation, volume/issue/date and pagination.

Articles that contain a comment display with [comment] appended to the end of the article title. Articles that are commented on in another article are displayed with [see comment] appended to the end of the article title.

The Country of Publication (CP) field contains the full name of the country in which an article was published. The country name is entered into the index as a phrase.

The Entry Date (ED) field contains the issue (year, month and day) in which the document was indexed as a completed Ovid HealthSTAR record. This index appears in the format YYYYMMDD.

The Electronic Date of Publication (EP) is the date the record was sent to NLM for inclusion in OVID HealthSTAR. This index appears in the format YYYYMMDD.

The Electronic ISSN (ES) field contains the Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN) for the journal in which an article was published. It appears as an 8- digit number, separated by a hyphen: 0028-4793.

Both Electronic and Print ISSNs can be searched in the ISSN Print (IS) field.

The Authors Full Name (FA) index contains the full name of the authors of the article.

The Floating Subheadings (FS) field contains both the 2-letter codes, such as  "po," and the full heading, such as "poisoning." These are displayed following the corresponding MeSH Subject Headings.

Subheadings are qualifiers added to MeSH subject headings to refine their meaning. Terms such as "etiology" or "therapy", when combined with a MeSH heading, give a very precise idea of what an article covers.

The Gene Symbol (GS) field contains Gene Symbols as they are entered into Ovid HealthSTAR in the original document. They often, but not always, conform to standardized human gene nomenclature. Ignore super or sub-scripts in entry of a gene symbol: psub 1450 would be entered p1450. Enter hyphens as in the original symbol.

This field appears in records from 1991 to 1995.

Sometimes you may wish to retrieve every MeSH subject heading that includes a particular word; this is done by searching the single word in the Subject Heading Word (HW) field.

The Investigator Affiliation (IA) field contains the NASA-funded principal investigator(s) affiliation.

The Institution (IN) field contains the primary author's affiliation, which is usually the source for a reprint of the article. This index also contains the investigators’ affiliation. This information can be searched in most documents since 1988, but records from earlier years which were added to the database after 1988 may also contain institution information. Beginning with documents indexed in 1996, the primary author's email address will also be included, if present in the journal. The information is taken from the source document and is not standardized. Enter the single most descriptive word in an institution (harvard, not university). Consider both full spellings and abbreviations.

The Issue/part field (IP) contains the Issue and/or part for a particular volume of a journal. This field displays as part of the Source (SO) field.

The Investigator (IR) field contains the investigators of the article. The format for authors is last name followed by one or more initials: Smith JC or Smith J.

Enter the last name, or if it is a common name, enter the last name and first initial. If you are unsure of the spelling of the last name (macdonald or mcdonald), enter one version and then scroll through the list of names to find the other.

The ISSN (IS) field contains the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) for the journal in which an article was published.

It appears as an 8 digit number, separated by a hyphen: 0028-4793.

The NLM Journal Code (JC) is an alpha-numeric code established by NLM which uniquely identifies every journal indexed in the NLM databases.

The Journal Name (JN) field contains the full name of the journal in which the article was published.

Journal names are indexed as phrases, so enter enough letters of the journal name to locate the name in the index: new engl (for New England Journal of Medicine).

This field displays as part of the Source (SO) field.

The Journal Word (JW) field contains individual words from every journal name in Ovid HealthSTAR. This field displays as part of the Source (SO) field.

Sometimes you may wish to retrieve every Keyword Heading that includes a particular word; this is done by searching the single word in the Keyword Heading Word (KF) field.

The Keyword Heading (KW) field contains the Keyword Headings assigned by indexers to describe the content of an article.

The Language (LG) field contains the language(s) of publication of an article. The language name will appear in the index as a 3-letter code (such as fre for French) and as the full name (French). The codes are usually, but not always, the first three letters of the language name.

The language index is quickly scrollable to determine all languages which appear in HealthSTAR.

The Molecular Sequence (MS) field contains an organizational acronym and the unique identifier that organization has applied to a molecular sequence.

The acronym appears first followed by a hyphen and the unique identifier: genbank-x54893.

The Molecular Sequence (MS) field was added to Ovid HealthSTAR in 1988.

The NLM Journal Name (NJ) field contains the full name of the journal in which an article was published. Some HealthSTAR journal titles contain the general material designation (GMD), within brackets, as a part of the full journal title. In the future, NLM has removed the bracketed GMD information.

Example: “BMC bioinformatics [electronic resource]” will become “BMC bioinformatics.”

The Name of Substance (NM) field contains single words from the CAS Registry Number/EC Number (RN) field and is used to search portions of chemical names.

The Name of Substance Word field was added to Ovid HealthSTAR in 1980.

The Grant Number (NO) field was created by NLM in 1981 to specify documents reporting on federally-funded research. Grant or contract numbers are displayed in full.

The General Note (NT) field contains either a series name and number or general supplementary information about an item.

The Other Abstract (OA) field includes a brief abstract written by staff members of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.

The Original Title (OT) includes any non-English titles in the original language. If the original title was in a non-Roman alphabet, the original title is transliterated.

The Primary Author (PA) field contains the first author listed for the article.  This allows users to search for articles by any primary author. Author names display in Authors (AU) and Authors Full Name (FA) fields.

Searching for smith rh.pa. will return results where Smith RH was listed as the main author of the article.

The Publisher (PB) field contains publisher information for books, monographs or any non-journal publications. This information is taken from the source document as it appears, so variant forms of a publisher are possible.

This field displays as part of the Source (SO) field.

The first page on which an article appears is indexed in the Page (PG) field. Often a journal title combined with the beginning page number is enough to locate a citation.

If an article is an interview or obituary, or simply discusses a well-known person, that person's name will appear in the Personal Name As Subject (PN) field.

The format for Personal Name is the same as for Author -- last name and initials: Koop CE. Enter a last name and one initial if known.

In addition to indexing documents with Medical Subject Headings, the indexers at the National Library of Medicine assign terms to describe the article type. These terms appear in the Publication Type (PT) field.

To view the index, enter enough letters to distinguish a publication type (jour for "journal article"); the entire index is quickly scrollable to determine all possible publication types.

The Revision Date (RD) field contains the issue (year, month and day) in which a document was revised in Index Medicus. The Revision Date field appears in the format YYYYMMDD.

The CAS Registry/EC Number/Name of Substance (RN) field contains the Chemical Abstracts Service Registry number or Enzyme Commission number for a compound mentioned in an article. If the generic compound name can be determined, it is included. The CAS Registry/EC Number field was added to Ovid HealthSTAR 1980.

Registry numbers appear with hyphens (50-00-0). EC numbers appear in the format ec 1 1 1 1 adh1c protein human. Chemical names appear with all special characters except hyphens removed.

The Record Owner (RO) field contains the owner of the record.

The Ovid HealthSTAR database is divided into subsets of journals. These journal subsets could appear in the Journal Subset (SB) field (Note that several are closed subsets no longer being assigned to current data):

The MeSH Subject Heading (SH) field contains the Medical Subject Headings used by indexers at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to describe the content of an article.

NLM's MeSH terms are organized in a hierarchy, or "tree" structure.

MeSH headings are entered into the index as phrases and should be searched as they appear in the NLM MeSH books or in our Tree display.

The Title (TI) field contains the English language version of a title. For documents which were not written in English, the original or transliterated title appears in a separate field, Original Title.

The Text Word (TW) field is an alias for all of the fields in a database which contain text words and which are appropriate for a subject search.

The Text Word field in HealthStar includes Title (TI) and Abstract (AB).

The Update Date (UP) field contains the date the record was added to Ovid's HealthSTAR since reload completion. The Update Date for existing records changes with each global reload to reflect the date NLM completes maintenance. The UP field appears in the format YYYYMMDD.

The Volume (VO) field consists of the volume and issue of a serial publication. This field displays as part of the Source (SO) field.

MeSH Subject Headings are hierarchical, with up to twelve levels of narrower terms from the top of a hierarchy. In order to retrieve a term and all of its narrower terms, a subject headings must be "exploded", that is, the subject heading and all narrower terms are "OR'd" together. This takes a lot of machine time, which is avoided in the OVID software by pre-exploding highly-posted broader terms with their narrower terms during loading. These pre-exploded MeSH Headings display in the MeSH Subject Headings (SH) field.

The Exploded Subheadings (XS) field displays the two-letter codes for the pre-exploded subheadings.

Sometimes multiple MeSH Subheadings can be logically grouped together. Such related groups of subheadings are "pre-exploded" under one broad subheading. This means that all the grouped subheadings can be retrieved together by searching on the "pre-exploded" version of the broad subheading.

The Year of Publication (YR) field contains the year in which an article or monograph was published. Only the four digit years appear in the index. This field displays as part of the Source (SO) field.