The KEYWDS record contains a set of terms relevant to the entry. Terms in the KEYWDS record provide a simple means of categorizing entries and may be used to generate index files. This record addresses some of the limitations found in the classification field of the HEADER record. It provides the opportunity to add further annotation to the entry in a concise and computer-searchable fashion.

This record is present in both PDB as Keywords_PDB and mmCIF as _struct_keywords.text and in PDBx as _struct_keywords.pdbx_keywords.