With more than 23 million citations to date from MEDLINE, life-science journals and online books, the giant National Institutes of Health database PubMed is arguably the most valuable tool available to biomedical scientists. Its vulnerability has been highlighted by this month's partial US government shutdown, with only minimal updates and maintenance to PubMed possible.

To avoid lapsing into another dark age of research, the ongoing maintenance of PubMed must be guaranteed. We urge the scientific community to push for PubMed to be entirely supported and commissioned by an international forum.