Scientific Reports on Hold in PubMed (Video)

0:00 Scientific Reports on Hold in PubMed

Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature journal, has more articles in PubMed than any other journal. In October 2026, its chief editor confirmed that the US National Library of Medicine is reviewing the journal. Since the review began, new papers from the journal no longer appear in PubMed. To see what the pause means, you need to know where PubMed records come from. MEDLINE is the library's curated index of journal articles, and PubMed Central is its full text archive. During a review, new papers from the journal go into neither database. As for the reason, the editor linked the review to the journal's rapid growth. Library policy names a change in publication volume as one trigger for a review. The review also determines how the library treats the papers held during the pause. If the journal meets the standards, the library indexes the held papers as well. If the journal fails, the library stops indexing Scientific Reports, and the held papers never enter MEDLINE. Until the review ends, you can read new Scientific Reports papers for free on the journal's website, but a PubMed search will not list those papers.