DeCS 2003 – Overview

The big news is the inclusion of the subcategory Health Law (SP9) in the Public Health category (SP). VHL indexers and users now count with this new addition to optimize indexing and searching in this specific subject area. It amounts to a total of 146 descriptors, 62 of which are new.

Other news

· 1250 descriptors MeSH added: 623 descriptors related to plants, 251 new drugs. Three new MeSH subcategories were also created: Integumentary System (A17), Genetic Phenomena (G13) and Genetic Structures (G14);

· 93 MeSH descriptors substituted with more up-to-date terminology;

· 20 MeSH descriptors eliminated;

· 1727 synonyms added in MeSH categories;

· more than 300 synonyms added in Homeopathy and Public Health;

· 1 qualifier ( /ethics );

· 24 descriptors added in Homeopathy (HP).

Upper/lower case

In 2002 DeCS started to use upper and lower case in the new terms for the purpose of standardization with MeSH, which also began to use these characters a year or two earlier, instead of just the upper case until then. In 2003, the same was done for the changed terms.

Now, one of the DeCS projects is that of transforming terms from previous years in the same manner and the insertion of accents (diacritics) in the Spanish terms which in upper case lack these characteristics.