BioConverters Package

The bioconverters package converts PubMed and PMC XML into plain text or BioC format.

Install

pip install bioconverters

PubMed

pubmedxml2txt - plain text, one string per article

from bioconverters import pubmedxml2txt

for text in pubmedxml2txt('/path/to/medline.xml', include_metadata=True):
    # text is a single string, e.g. "pmid: 123\njournal: ...\n\nTitle\n\nAbstract..."
    ...

Flags: sections (default ("title", "abstract")), include_metadata (prepend a pmid/doi/year/journal/authors header), passage_separator (default "\n\n").

pubmedxml2bioc - BioC documents

from bioconverters import pubmedxml2bioc

for doc in pubmedxml2bioc('/path/to/medline.xml'):
    # doc is a bioc.BioCDocument, with title/abstract as separate passages
    ...

parse_pubmedxml - raw dicts, for everything else

from bioconverters import parse_pubmedxml

for article in parse_pubmedxml('/path/to/medline.xml'):
    # a PubMedArticle dict: pmid, pmcid, doi, pub_year/month/day, title, abstract,
    # journal, journal_iso, authors, chemicals, mesh_headings, supplementary_mesh,
    # publication_types
    ...

Use this if you need fields pubmedxml2txt/pubmedxml2bioc don't expose, like authors, MeSH headings or chemicals.

PMC

pmcxml2txt - plain text, one string per article/sub-article

from bioconverters import pmcxml2txt

for text in pmcxml2txt('/path/to/pmc.xml', include_metadata=True):
    # text is a single string, e.g. "pmid: 123\njournal: ...\n\nTitle\n\nAbstract...\n\nBody..."
    ...

Flags: sections (default ("title", "abstract", "article"), also available: subtitle, back, floating), include_metadata, passage_separator, trim_buggy_sentences, inject_citations, clean_numeric_citations, clean_xrefs_in_brackets, clear_empty_brackets, fix_exponentials (cleanup flags described below).

pmcxml2bioc - BioC documents

from bioconverters import pmcxml2bioc

for doc in pmcxml2bioc('/path/to/pmc.xml'):
    # doc is a bioc.BioCDocument, with one passage per paragraph/section
    ...

parse_pmcxml - raw dicts, with optional inline markup and citation control

from bioconverters import parse_pmcxml

for article in parse_pmcxml('/path/to/pmc.xml'):
    # a PMCArticle dict: pmid, pmcid, doi, pub_year/month/day, journal, journal_iso,
    # and text_sources - a dict of title/subtitle/abstract/article/back/floating,
    # each a list of {"text": ..., "subsection": ...} passages
    ...

parse_pmcxml shares its defaults with pmcxml2txt/pmcxml2bioc, so behavior is consistent regardless of entry point. Notable flags:

• return_xml (default False) - return each passage's text as a marked-up XML string instead of plain text. Pair with keep_tags to control which tags survive, e.g. "some <sup>1</sup>H text".
• keep_tags - which tags' markup is preserved inline when return_xml=True. Defaults to pmc_constants.PMC_KEEP_TAGS (<sup>, <sub>, <italic>, etc).
• inject_citations (default False) - resolve each in-text citation's pmid/doi and retag it to <citation pmid="...">1</citation>, kept in the output instead of dropped. Can't be combined with clean_numeric_citations.
• clean_numeric_citations, clean_xrefs_in_brackets, clear_empty_brackets (all default True) - see "Cleaning up text" below.

Notes on text extraction

Text is extracted using spans_and_trees. Table content is omitted from extracted text. Overly long, unbroken runs of text are automatically trimmed to a maximum length (controlled by the trim_buggy_sentences flag).

Cleaning up text

When turning PMC XML into plain text, we need to do some tidying to remove potential artefacts.

Removing numeric citations with clean_numeric_citations

In-text citation markers (<xref ref-type="bibr">) are meaningless once printed as plain numbers, and can even glue onto the preceding word if the source XML has no separating space. The clean_numeric_citations argument (default True) blanks any bibr xref whose own text is just a number or numbers, bracketed or not (e.g. "1", "[1,2,3]", "[1-3]"), regardless of what surrounds it:

before: "...active in tuberculosis<sup>1</sup> and other diseases..."
after:  "...active in tuberculosis and other diseases..."

An author-date citation like "Smith et al., 2020" is left untouched, since it's still informative without the full reference resolved. clean_numeric_citations can't be combined with inject_citations (see below) - one deletes bibr citations, the other enriches them.

Removing cross-references wrapped in parentheses with clean_xrefs_in_brackets

A cross-reference such as a figure or table is often the sole content of a (...)/[...] wrapper, which reads as redundant clutter once it's no longer resolvable. The clean_xrefs_in_brackets argument (default True) drops the reference together with its wrapper:

before: "...reported in various solid cancers (Table 1). Analogous mutations..."
after:  "...reported in various solid cancers. Analogous mutations..."

This only fires when the reference fills the wrapper on its own and the punctuation matches on both sides (both round or both square) - a mixed reference like "(see Table 1)", a grouped one like "(Figure 7 and Table 3)", or mismatched punctuation like "[Table 1)" is left untouched.

Tidying up empty brackets with clear_empty_brackets

Blanking out a citation or cross-reference, or dropping an unrelated tag (e.g. <ext-link>) that happened to sit inside parentheses, can leave an empty wrapper behind. The clear_empty_brackets argument (default True) removes any (...)/[...]/{...} left containing no word characters:

before: "...as predicted by the tool (<ext-link>miRDB</ext-link>)..."
after:  "...as predicted by the tool..."

Tidying up extra spaces

Whitespace is always collapsed to single spaces, so line breaks and indentation from the source XML, as well as any spaces left behind by blanked-out content, don't show up as irregular spacing in the final text. This isn't controlled by a flag.

Handling lost formatting

Some XML tags convey meaningful information and text looks horrible without the formatting they provide. For instance, a PMC article may contain "3x10<sup>8</sup> m/s". If we remove those tags, it becomes "3x108 m/s" which is obviously wrong.

There are two options:

1. If you want plain text, tags are stripped automatically. But the fix_exponentials flag (default True) tries to spot cases where an exponential can be nicely cleaned up (e.g. to "3x10^8 m/s").
2. Work with a modified XML format that keeps some of the formatting tags, by passing return_xml=True to parse_pmcxml. Which tags survive is controlled by keep_tags, which defaults to the pmc_constants.PMC_KEEP_TAGS list of tags. This list includes <sup>, <sub> and others.

Getting citation info with inject_citations

This relates to getting XML format (with return_xml=True). PMC articles cite references with <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="...">1</xref>, where rid points at a <ref> in the back-matter <ref-list>. With inject_citations=True (default False), the information is pulled from the bibliography so no cross-referencing is needed.

The referenced pub-ids (e.g. pmid, doi) and a count of how many references are added as attributes:

<!-- before -->
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="r2 r3">2,3</xref>

<!-- after -->
<citation pmid="222|333" count="2">2,3</citation>

A grouped citation (multiple rids, e.g. "[2,3]") gets its pub-id values |-joined, with count telling you how many references were bundled without needing to split them yourself.