[Computer databases and scientific and research information systems]

Medical informatics, especially computer data bases for collecting, processing and searching of scientific and research informations and publications is important for medical science and for the medical practice. Medical scientific informatics has developed as a special part of medical informatics. It is very important for medical education, medical research and publishing in biomedical disciplines. This paper presents the main characteristics of scientific and research information, their resources, searching of medical literature from biomedical journals. A historical survey of the foundation of the System for Biomedical Scientific Information in ex Yugoslavia (SBMNI) has been presented, with its conceptual basis, the current organization, the achieved results and experiences obtained.