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‘Omg, did PubMed go dark?’ Blackout stokes fears about database’s future

A brief outage has focused attention on scientists’ reliance on the US-government-funded website.
By
  1. Smriti Mallapaty
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A temporary outage of the US-government-funded PubMed database of biomedical literature over the weekend sent many researchers globally into a panic. Although the disruption does not seem to have been deliberate, and the service has since been restored, the episode highlights scientists’ reliance on the website and left many anguished about its future.

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Nature 639, 288 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00674-3

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