As Prof. Ulrich Dirnagl wrote in March 2023, around seven million scientific articles are published each year in 34,000 listed journals, according to the “Web of Science”. The numbers have been rising exponentially for decades. ⁽¹⁾ An important question is: who can read this? And how do you find the articles that could be of interest for your own goals, e.g. on the subject of animal testing and animal-free methods? In addition, there is the huge number of different articles, such as original articles, case reports, technical notes, pictorial essays or reviews (e.g. narrative overview articles, systematic reviews or meta-analyses), commentaries and editorials. ⁽²⁾

It is obvious that machine learning, or more precisely deep learning with the help of multi-layered, artificial neural networks, should be taken into consideration for this purpose. The computer recognizes patterns from texts and images and learns to answer the questions posed in the best possible way. However, there are still a certain number of important articles that are not published open access.

Deep learning models usually utilize Pubmed/Pubmed Central (PMC) of the National Institutes of Health, which is considered a reliable source. ⁽³⁾ While PubMed provides citations and abstracts for around 38 million articles, PMC currently contains 11.2 million articles. ⁽⁴⁾ Links to the full text of PMC are “often” available if they come from PMC or the publisher's website. ⁽⁵⁾

The aim of the BiMMoH database is to capture the explosive growth of non-animal models in biomedical research. Machine learning will be used to extract, filter and categorize the applicable scientific publications that use human biological models to promote the use of non-animal approaches. The program searches through hundreds of thousands of articles and includes only those that describe non-animal or at least hybrid models based on human biology. ⁽⁶⁾

Already in October 2024, ECVAM organized an interactive workshop. ⁽⁷⁾ The database - as ECVAM writes in the 2024 status report - will be a valuable resource for project evaluators and research funding organizations. It will also help researchers to identify the most suitable model for their specific research questions, including researchers who are thinking of applying for animal testing. ⁽⁸⁾

⁽¹⁾ Dirnagl, U (2023). Why scientific oomph is decreasing worldwide. Lab Journal. https://www.laborjournal.de/rubric/narr/narr/n_23_03.php
⁽²⁾ Ghasemi A, Mirmiran P, Kashfi K, Bahadoran Z. Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine (2022). A Brief History of Scientific Journals. Int J Endocrinol Metab. 2022 Dec 31;21(1):e131812. doi: 10.5812/ijem-131812. PMID: 36945344; PMCID: PMC10024814.
⁽³⁾ Teixeira da Silva JA. (2023). Is the validity, credibility, and reliability of literature indexed in PubMed at risk? Med J Armed Forces India. 2023 Sep-Oct;79(5):601-602. doi: 10.1016/j.mjafi.2021.03.009. Epub 2021 Aug 9. PMID: 37719912; PMCID: PMC10499640.
⁽⁴⁾ NIH, National Library of Medicine. National Center for Biotechnology Information (2025). PMC PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
⁽⁵⁾ NIH, National Library of Medicine. National Center for Biotechnology Information (2025). PubMed Overview. As of March 11, 2025. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/about/
⁽⁶⁾ TPI (2025). “Replacing animal models means reshaping the scientific system”. Hannah van der Vegt. https://www.animalfreeinnovationtpi.nl/tpi-initiatives/nams-databases/eurl-ecvam
⁽⁷⁾ University of Tübingen (2024). EURL ECVAM Workshop: Development of the animal-free model database BiMMoH. https://www.the3rs.uni-tuebingen.de/eurl-ecvam-workshop-entwicklung-der-tierversuchsfreien-modell-datenbank-bimmoh/
⁽⁸⁾ European Commission, JRC Publication Repository (2025). Non-Animal Methods in Science and Regulation. ECVAM Status Report 2024. 2025-04-02. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC141304

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