This Directory Contains Deprecated Files

The files in this directory are deprecated and provided for historical 
comparison and refernce use only.  For access to the latest MeSH distribution, 
go the the National Library of Medicine site: 
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/filelist.html.

We are working to update these files to reflect more extensive relationship information now available from the 
NLM distribution, but this work is not yet complete.

The files in this directory are derived from MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), 
the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus.
This directory contains four data files, mesh_ABDEGH.go and mesh_ABDEGH.def.

mesh_ABDEGH.go - the MeSH A,B,D,E,G and H trees in GO format
mesh_ABDEGH.def - definitions for the mesh_ABDEGH.go terms

These files were created and can be read with DAG-edit (version 1.316)

The files were updated in 2005:

mesh_ABDEGH2005.go - the MeSH A,B,D,E,G and H trees in GO format
mesh_ABDEGH2005.def - definitions for the mesh_ABDEGH.go terms

Notes on the conversion process

The conversion process accomplished with an automated script.  There are a
couple  of known bugs, in particular MeSH defines terms in the plural form
while GO uses the singular; the script occasionally makes errors.  Also, MeSH
uses title case while the default in GO is lower case.  I did not go back to
fix the capitalization of proper nouns.  All blanks were replaced with
underscores.  Semicolons in MeSH definitions were replaced with commas to avoid
problems with semicolons in GO files.  Finally, MeSH uses a comma in many
defintions.  When a single comma was present the terms were reordered to
conform to the GO style E.g.

Cell, Myeloid -> myeloid_cells

Relations

The DAG-Edit files use "is a" relations to capture the hierarchical structure
underlying much of MeSH, although in a small number of instances, MeSH is not 
strictly hierarchical in its structure.  In such cases, the first occurence of
a term is arbitrarily used to place it in the DAG-Edit hierarchy and true
cycles are broken.  For more disucsion of relationships in MeSH see Nelson et al.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshrels.html.

Terms of Use

No license is required to obtain the data. Use of this data is subject
to the following restrictions and by obtaining a copy of the data, the user is 
understood to abide by these conditions:

    a). the U.S. National Library of Medicine must be identified as the creator,
    maintainer, and provider of the data; the version of the data must be clearly 
    stated by MeSH year, e.g., 1997 MeSH; and if any modification is made in the 
    content of the file, this must be stated, along with a description of the 
    modifications (see above notes on conversion process).

    b). Neither the United States Government, nor any of its agencies, 
    contractors, subcontractors or employees makes any warranties, expressed
    or implied, with respect to data contained in the database, and, 
    furthermore, assumes no legal liability for any party's use, or the 
    results of such use, of any part of the database.

    c). You will not assert any proprietary rights to any portion of the 
    database, or represent the database or any part thereof to anyone as 
    other than a United States Government database.

    d). The MeSH data carry an international copyright outside the United 
    States, its Territories or Possessions. These terms and conditions are 
    in effect as long as the user retains any of the MeSH data obtained from 
    this site. 

Availability

The data are available to all requesters, both within and outside the United
States. There is no charge for obtaining the file. 

See the terms-of-use.html file in this same directory for details.

David J. States
March 3, 2003
January 2, 2007