Thing 14 - PubMed and PubMed Alternatives

PubMed rocks. Over 19 million citations of fascinating medical research, scientific discoveries, expert opinions, nursing articles, healthcare management how-to's, freaky case reports and so much more!! Could you use Google and get a few lucky hits? Yes. But to get the best published literature on a medical topic, there's no better place.

PubMed

The assumption for this 8 Things module is that you are already aware of PubMed and use it occasionally. This will not be a PubMed tutorial. If you have never used PubMed and would like to get some help on how to perform a basic search, please contact the library and we can set up some time to help you.

NEW PubMed features

You may have noticed that PubMed looks a bit different lately. The basic search (first screen) is more Google-like in it's simplicity. Some other features require a few more clicks, but overall it may be easier to use for the occasional user.  There is some web 2.0 creeping into PubMed.  Lots of ways to share citations...






RSS Feed

You may have tried this in the RSS Thing. Your search in PubMed can be easily made into an RSS feed. Choose a topic you like to keep up with and type it into PubMed. To get a good search strategy you may have to apply limits or MeSH (or, of course, ask a librarian to help you). Once you get a good-looking search, click the RSS button above the search box. Then name your feed and click 'Create RSS'. Click on the orange XML box and copy/paste the URL into your feed reader.

 

Public Sharing of Citations

SHARE! Love that web 2.0 mantra! PubMed has now made it easier to share citations. You should be familiar with using PubMed's MyNCBI feature. Briefly, it is your own personal PubMed site. To register, just create a username and password. You can save searches and citations in MyNCBI. When you are done searching you can click the 'Send To' down arrow and choose 'Collections'. Once in MyNCBI, you can edit your collection and change it to 'Public'. This feature will give you a link and can be emailed to anyone and everyone! The link will go directly to the list of citations in PubMed!


Even better that a link - you can embed a PubMed search into your blog! Hint (this will be your assignment in a few minutes....)

PubMed Alternative Interfaces


There are a few free databases popping up on the Internet that use the PubMed citations behind the scenes, but have changed the format or interface. These are usually started by computer and science geeks at MIT or Harvard or Mom's basement and VOILA ---new PubMed. As librarians, we prefer the tried and true ORIGINAL PubMed, but, hey, whatever gets you to use the medical literature is alright with us.

Highwire Press - Regions Hospital Medical Library has used this hosting site for many years.  We host many of our top journals here, including New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA.  It is also possible to use Highwire for searching.  Results will show the cost of the full-text.  If we subscribe through highwire, it will read "Free", if not, the cost is shown.  You can also change the search to include all of PubMed (it defaults to only searching Highwire Press journals).  If you find an article that charges for full-text, the library still may subscribe through another vendor. 

HubMed - HubMed is probably the closest format to PubMed.  The format is very simple and clean with most of the same features as PubMed.  You may just like the look of this better - less distracting?  You can export results directly to EndNote or Refworks. 
PubFocus - PubFocus will take your results and analyzes them by journal or author ranking.  This may be helpful when you need help deciding which journal to publish your own research.  PubFocus will help anwser the question - what journal covers this topic the best? 
PubGet - Pubget allows the user to immediately see the pdf of an article (if available).  Regions/HealthPartners is not a recognized institution yet; if we were, you could see the full-text of the over 300 online journals we subscribe to come up in the search.  View the short 1 minute video on Pubget's homepage.

Q.Sensei - Q-Sensei searches PubMed, the Library of Congress book collection and a few other databases.  The format is easy to use.  Most results come from PubMed. 

 

Which PubMed Alternative do you think has the most potential?  Take our poll and if there is a clear winner, the librarians will post it on the library's Intranet site for everyone to use!

Online Surveys & Market Research

Assignment

1. Create an RSS feed in PubMed. If you need more information on how to do this, check out this RSS handout we created.

2. Set up a MyNCBI account in PubMed. This will allow you to share your citations with others. Register (free) for a MyNCBI account. Perform a search, then send your citations to "Collections". You can then "edit your collection".

2a. Try making your results a public link and share them with a colleague.

2b. Try embedding your search in your blog! BONUS POINTS (ok, we don't have bonus points, but it would be really cool if you embedded something PubMed-ish into your blog!)

3. Read this blog entry by David Rothman, medical librarian blogger, regarding PubMed Alternative Interfaces.

4. Try an "alternative PubMed". Choose from the five featured above or check out a different one from this list.

Address the following in your blog.

What challenges do you face when searching PubMed?  Were you able to set up a MyNCBI account and share citations?

Blog about the PubMed alternative you think has the most potential.  Would you use it on a regular basis?

Why did you choose this Thing?

Record the time spent on this Thing.