Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

This year ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) is sponsoring THREE competitions – two for undergraduates and a new competition for Master’s level students!

The purpose of these competitions is to highlight the best student research papers using quantitative data.  The objective is to encourage students to explore the social sciences by means of critical analysis of a topic supported by quantitative analysis of a dataset(s) held within the ICPSR archive and presented in written form.

• The winner of each competition receives $1,000 cash and the paper will be published.
• Deadline for submission is January 31, 2010.

More information, submission guidelines, and promotional posters are found by visiting the competition website.

Visit the new Genetics and Genomics subject guide created by the Biomedical Library. This guide includes links to and descriptions of journals, databases, and other tools needed to study these topics. Rate or comment on the guide itself, or contact the Biomedical Library with suggestions for other content to include.

<submitted by Amy Chatfield>

Bruins searching for scholarly literature in the environmental sciences have a new source to use: CSA has added Environment Abstracts to its Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management database.

Environment Abstracts indexes articles, books, conference papers, government documents, and conference proceedings from 1975 to the present. Topics covered include:

• Air quality
• Bacteriology
• Ecology
• Energy resources
• Hazardous waste
• Industrial hygiene
• Pollution: land, air, water, noise, solid waste, radioactive
• Risk assessment
• Toxicology & toxic emissions
• Waste management
• Water resource issues

Environment Abstracts information has already been added to our Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management database. Try a search and see what new materials you can discover!

<submitted by Amy Chatfield>

Mental Measurements Yearbook has moved to Ovid’s SilverPlatter database platform to make your searches for psychological, educational, and personality-related tests and measures even easier. This resource allows you to search by test titles, authors, keywords, publishers, publication dates, and revision dates of over  2000 tests. You may also use the advanced search to make your search more specific. UCLA’s subscription to Mental Measurements Yearbook includes access to the 5th through 17th editions, covering 1985-present. Contact the Biomedical Library if you have questions about this new platform, or need help searching for psychological tests and measures.

<submitted by Amy Chatfield>

Need a quick reminder on where the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) is shelved in the Biomedical Library? Can’t figure out how to find information about a psychological test? Need help locating peer-reviewed psychological literature? Check out the new UCLA Biomedical Library subject guide for Psychology. Subject guides are carefully curated lists of resources created by subject specialist librarians to help you in your research or teaching.

The Psychology subject guide has been entirely updated and migrated to LibGuides, a new web hosting service. LibGuides permit comments within the guide, as well as allowing users to rate links and suggest other items to include. Your comments and suggestions are invited: you can help us make this guide more useful for fellow Bruins.

The UCLA Library maintains subject guides for many topics. Find links to subject guides in the health and life sciences on the Biomedical Library’s Key Resources page, or review all UCLA Library guides.

Beginning in February 2009, California Digital Library Collections, eScholarship, and the University of California Scholarly Communications Officers are piloting a ground-breaking open access publishing arrangement with Springer.

During this pilot project, articles by UCLA affiliated authors accepted for publication in a Springer journal will be published using Springer Open Choice with full and immediate access. This means that UC authors will pay no additional publication fees in order for their articles to be immediately accessible full-text to the public. Under this agreement, articles will be published under a license in which authors retain the right to distribute and re-use their articles freely.

In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library’s eScholarship Repository.

Authors must take some action to ensure that their article is published as an Open Choice article. After a manuscript has been submitted, reviewed, and accepted for publication into a Springer journal, the corresponding author is notified and asked to complete a Web-based acceptance form. This form provides an option to identify author’s institutions. Select “University of California, Los Angeles” from the drop-down list of institutions (see first thumbnail image below).

At the end of the acceptance process, review the notification that your article will be published via Springer Open Choice (see second thumbnail image above).

Articles with multiple authors are eligible for this publishing arrangement as long as one author is a UCLA faculty member. If you publish with faculty from other institutions, and they serve as the corresponding author, let them know about this new Open Access pilot and the steps they must take to ensure that your article is published with full open access rights.

If you have questions about the UC/Springer Open Choice pilot program, or need help exercising this option while accepting your article, contact Janet Carter, Collection Coordinator, UCLA Biomedical Library.

UCLA Library reference service is now available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

The Library is partnering with other UC campuses and librarians around the world to provide this newly enhanced service.  Because it is staffed by external as well as UCLA  librarians, your question may be referred for follow up to the UCLA Library, in which case a UCLA Library staff member will contact you within twenty-four hours.

Online reference can be accessed from all library Web pages through the “Questions? Ask Us!” graphic on the right-hand side of the banner.

To add a link to this service to a course Web site or department homepage, copy and paste this HTML code: <http://www2.library.ucla.edu/questions/qwidget_code.html>. This will produce a live chat box (Qwidget).

If you have questions about the new expanded hours of online reference or any other Library services, please contact us.

Bruins now have a choice when accessing SciFinder Scholar: use the new Web version or continue using downloaded client software. You must register using an email address including “@ucla.edu” (e.g., “@mednet.ucla.edu”) prior to using the Web version of SciFinder Scholar. Get instructions on registration, or go directly to SciFinder if you are already registered. You may also continue using the downloaded client if you prefer, but the Web version includes new features that are unavailable in the client.

New features included in the Web version:

• Save and access your search history across sessions
• Export search results in PDF format
• Use the “Keep Me Posted” feature to have search results emailed to you
• Index terms are hyperlinks, permitting faster searching for concepts

SciFinder Scholar can be used to locate journal articles, patents, conference proceedings, and other literature in chemistry, medicine, and related areas, and information on chemical substances and reactions. SciFinder Scholar also analyzes information about citations, so you can find related information, discover prominent individuals in a specific field, or determine which journals publish information in a specific area.

Note that all of the University of California campuses share access to this resource, and we have a limited number of concurrent users. Once you have completed your searches, please remember to “Sign Out” of SciFinder to make sure it is available for other users.

A new funding opportunity for our undergraduate researchers is available through the UCLA Library. The inspiration for the UCLA Library Prize for Undergraduate Research came from Ruth Simon, lover of books and libraries. This new prize has been established:

• to encourage undergraduate students to reflect on the research process in the pursuit of excellence in their academic course work;
• to recognize the significance of information literacy as it relates to academic learning; and
• to reward undergraduate students who incorporate the collections of the UCLA Library into their research.

All applications are due by 4 p.m. on Monday, April 6, 2009. Two awards will be given: first place receives an award of $750, and honorable mention receives an award of $300.

For complete details, such as eligibility and the application process, visit the Library Prize for Undergraduate Research web page.  If you have questions, please contact Alison Armstrong, director of Undergraduate Initiatives.

PubMed is constantly improved by teams at the National Library of Medicine and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). These improvements are based on user feedback and information on how the system is used. Over the last several months, PubMed has undergone a variety of changes. Below you will find a list of some of those changes. There may be some updates that you may have noticed recently while you’ve been using PubMed for your research and practice. We thought it was important to cover both the highly visible and the more hidden changes.

Recent PubMed Changes

• The order of the article title and authors has been switched in the Summary display, which is the default display once a search has been performed in PubMed. The title is now first followed by the list of authors.
• A link to the Clipboard has been added to the right of the PubMed search box. This link appears once you’ve added items to the Clipboard for easier access to those items. If you don’t currently use the Clipboard, find out more about how to use the Clipboard and the benefits of doing so.
• The Related Articles box now includes a special red “Review” tag for review articles. This displays when looking at the AbstractPlus view.
• Recent Activity box, containing recent searches and applied limits, can be maximized, minimized, turned on and turned off.
• My NCBI Collection amount increased to 5,000 from 500. Collections are a way for My NCBI users to keep track of important items found in PubMed and other NCBI databases. If you don’t currently use My NCBI to customize and personalize PubMed and other NCBI databases, find out more about the benefits for doing so here.
• Advanced Search has been added to the right of the PubMed search box. The advanced search includes the same options currently available on the limits and history tabs.

Additional Information 

If you have questions, comments, and/or other thoughts about the recent and future changes in PubMed, please leave us a comment. We’d like to hear what you think of this resource and the ways you are using it.