A newly visible PubMed record can describe an older article. Before calling a paper new, ask which event the date represents. A health-news timeline should make that distinction explicit, particularly when an editor discovers a paper through a recent database search.
NLM’s guide distinguishes publication date, entry date, record creation date and MeSH indexing date. It also explains that online and print publication dates can differ. Those labels describe separate events; a single unlabelled year cannot preserve the whole chronology.
Write an event-based source note
Use a short line for each event actually documented: online publication, print issue, database creation and the date you read the source. Leave a missing event blank rather than calculating it from another field. Keep the original label with the value, especially if an export abbreviates it.
Consider a hypothetical paper published online in December and assigned to a January issue. A reader encountering it in a later search needs that sequence. A headline describing a discovery made in January would require evidence about the research itself; the issue month alone does not supply it.
Choose a date for the job
| Editorial task | Question to resolve |
|---|---|
| News chronology | When was the report first publicly published? |
| Search update | Which database-event field defines the update window? |
| Citation | Which date belongs to the version and issue being cited? |
This worksheet is an editorial aid. It does not replace a review protocol’s prespecified search method. If a previous search used one date field, changing fields midway can alter what the update covers. Record the change and its reason.
Keep publication timing separate from freshness
The date of a report and the period of its underlying data can be far apart. After fixing the citation chronology, read the methods for the observation period. Likewise, a recent database update should not be presented as a new experiment. A useful source note lets the next reader identify the event, the version and the period without having to reconstruct your assumptions.
Primary documentation read 21 October 2026. Workflow suggestions are editorial; no clinical study or patient decision is evaluated here.
Sources: Primary resource documentation. Related discussion: health information source quality.
Leave a Reply