PMID and DOI

The two identifiers that pin a scientific claim to a checkable source: PubMed's record number for a paper, and the persistent digital object identifier its publisher registers.

A PMID is the accession number PubMed assigns to an article indexed in the biomedical literature — a plain integer that resolves to the paper's record, with its title, authors, journal, abstract and links. A DOI is a publisher-registered persistent identifier that resolves to the article itself wherever it currently lives. Most indexed biomedical papers carry both; either one makes a citation checkable in seconds.

Checkability is the entire point. A citation given as a bare claim — an author name and a year, or a paraphrased title — must be taken on trust; a citation carrying a PMID or DOI can be pulled up and read. The identifier also protects against subtler failures: retrieving the actual record catches paraphrased titles, misattributed findings and retracted papers in a way no summary does.

Every study cited in this site's research library was retrieved from its NCBI or Europe PMC record and checked against it — title, journal, year, DOI — before publication, and retracted papers were excluded. The identifiers are published with each citation so the same check remains open to any reader.

SourceNCBI — PubMed help

For research purposes only. Not for human consumption, diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of any condition. Nothing on this page is medical advice.