A comparative study of six European databases of medically oriented Web resources.

Objectives: The paper describes six European medically oriented databases of Web resources, pertaining to five quality-controlled subject gateways, and compares their performance.

Method: The characteristics, coverage, procedure for selecting Web resources, record structure, searching possibilities, and existence of user assistance were described for each database. Performance indicators for each database were obtained by means of searches carried out using the key words, "myocardial infarction.