Biomedicine's electronic publishing paradigm shift: copyright policy and PubMed Central

Bibliometrics and beyond: some thoughts on web-based citation analysis

The idea of a unified citation index to the literature of science was first outlined by Eugene Garfield [1] in 1955 in the journal Science. Science Citation Index has since established itself as the gold standard for scientific information retrieval. It has also become the database of choice for citation analysts and evaluative bibliometricians worldwide. As scientific publication moves to the web, and novel approaches to scholarly communication and peer review establish themselves, new methods of citation and link analysis will emerge to capture often liminal expressions of peer esteem, influence and approbation. The web thus affords bibliometricians rich opportunities to apply and adapt their techniques to new contexts and content: the age of ‘bibliometric spectroscopy’ [2] is dawning.

"Information Survival Skills": a medical school elective

OBJECTIVE

The authors developed an elective course to assist students in (1) understanding the changing nature of scholarly communication and online publishing, (2) identifying resources and strategies for searching current best evidence, and (3) demonstrating effective communication of information.

SETTING

The course took place in a medical school in the Southwest.

PARTICIPANTS

Second- and third-year medical students participated in the course.

INTERVENTION

A pass-fail, undergraduate-level elective was first offered October to December 2006. This 7.5 hour course, developed and co-taught by 2 health sciences library faculty, consisted of hands-on exercises, small group discussion, and didactic lecture.

CONCLUSION

Presenting a medical school elective is one possible outlet for intensive bibliographic instruction. Illustrating the flow of information from creation to management and presentation affords students an opportunity to understand information in context. This elective has been consistently ranked very high in student evaluations and led to new and expanded teaching opportunities.

An open source model for open access journal publication

We describe an electronic journal publication infrastructure that allows a flexible publication workflow, academic exchange around different forms of user submissions, and the exchange of articles between publishers and archives using a common XML based standard. This web-based application is implemented on a freely available open source software stack. This publication demonstrates the Dermatology Online Journal's use of the platform for non-biased independent open access publication.

Publication of clinical trials: accountability and accessibility

Publication of findings from clinical trials is a necessary step in the research continuum, to provide a record of the work done, convey information to the community, and support translation of research into clinical practice. Systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials are now widely regarded as the highest level of evidence in determining the effect of an intervention on an outcome. They largely depend on internationally accessible, published reports of all trials undertaken. Investigators and their institutions or organizations have responsibility for reporting their clinical trials accurately and completely, including disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. To ensure evidence-based health care, issues relating to accessibility and accountability of clinical trial results require immediate action.

Evidence-based practice: extending the search to find material for the systematic review

BACKGROUND

Cochrane-style systematic reviews increasingly require the participation of librarians. Guidelines on the appropriate search strategy to use for systematic reviews have been proposed. However, research evidence supporting these recommendations is limited.

OBJECTIVE

This study investigates the effectiveness of various systematic search methods used to uncover randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for systematic reviews. Effectiveness is defined as the proportion of relevant material uncovered for the systematic review using extended systematic review search methods. The following extended systematic search methods are evaluated: searching subject-specific or specialized databases (including trial registries), hand searching, scanning reference lists, and communicating personally.

METHODS

Two systematic review projects were prospectively monitored regarding the method used to identify items as well as the type of items retrieved. The proportion of RCTs identified by each systematic search method was calculated.

RESULTS

The extended systematic search methods uncovered 29.2% of all items retrieved for the systematic reviews. The search of specialized databases was the most effective method, followed by scanning of reference lists, communicating personally, and hand searching. Although the number of items identified through hand searching was small, these unique items would otherwise have been missed.

CONCLUSIONS

Extended systematic search methods are effective tools for uncovering material for the systematic review. The quality of the items uncovered has yet to be assessed and will be key in evaluating the value of the systematic search methods.

Online publishing: how, why and other related issues

The Internet allows the creation of a peer reviewed online journal, such as Images in Paediatric Cardiology, at a fraction of the cost of a conventional journal. Furthermore, an online journal can display a multitude of images and other multimedia material (such as audio and video files)--a feature not available in a conventional journal. The issues of creating such a journal are explored, along with the issues of online publishing, including copyright and peer review. Current proposals that may affect copyright and peer review in all journals are also outlined.

Electronic publishing of science: better late than never

The time required for medical publication in the print literature has changed little in 200 years, whereas scientific discovery now proceeds at a dizzying pace. There is a growing disjunction between the efficiency of science and the inefficiency of scientific reporting. Electronic publication as proposed for PubMedCentral is a logical solution to this problem.

Publishing on the WWW. Part 4 - Pubmed Central: a publishing paradigm shift

This article discusses the environment leading to the founding of the Pubmed Central database, and its likely effects on publishing as we know it.

Biomedical publishing and the internet: evolution or revolution?

The Internet is challenging traditional publishing patterns. In the biomedical domain, medical journals are providing more and more content online, both free and for a fee. Beyond this, however, a number of commentators believe that traditional notions of copyright and intellectual property ownership are no longer suited to the information age and that ownership of copyright to research reports should be and will be wrested from publishers and returned to authors. In this paper, it is argued that, although the Internet will indeed profoundly affect the distribution of biomedical research results, the biomedical publishing industry is too intertwined with the research establishment and too powerful to fall prey to such a copyright revolution.