Two things decide it: whether the journal sits in one of the seven databases the Gazette names, and whether your article type is one of the four that count. “It’s on PubMed” settles neither.
The journal index loads the first time you search.
The Gazette names PubMed Central, not PubMed. They are different things. MEDLINE is the curated citation database. PubMed Central is the full-text archive. PubMed is the search interface sitting over both, plus records that belong to neither.
In NLM's own data, 4,553 journal ISSNs appear in PubMed but not in MEDLINE. Publish in one of those believing you are covered, and you may find out at your promotion interview that you are not.
The article type is the other half. A case report in a flawless MEDLINE journal still does not count. Only original papers, meta-analyses, systematic reviews and case series do. If you are unsure where you stand overall, the promotion eligibility calculator works it out against your post and years in service.
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. The 2025 Gazette names Medline, PubMed Central, Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded, Embase, Scopus and DOAJ. PubMed is a search interface that covers more than MEDLINE, so a journal can be findable on PubMed without being in any of the named databases.
MEDLINE is NLM's curated citation database and is named in the Gazette. PubMed Central is NLM's full-text archive and is also named. PubMed is the search interface that sits over both plus additional records, and it is not itself named. A journal in PubMed but not MEDLINE may still deposit in PubMed Central, so check which of the two it actually is.
Those lists are licensed commercial products and cannot be redistributed. The page links the official lookup for each so you can confirm in a few seconds, rather than showing you a guess.
No. The article type matters just as much. Definition 2(1)(j) recognises only original papers, meta-analysis, systematic reviews and case series. A case report in a MEDLINE journal still does not count towards promotion.
If it is in none of the seven named databases, that is the first signal. Others: solicitation by email, a promise of publication within days, fees disclosed only after acceptance, an editorial board you cannot verify, and a title that closely mimics an established journal.
Send us the journal and the paper you are planning. We will tell you whether it counts, and suggest alternatives that do.
Ask us about a journal