Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

Store PDF files with Papers and create a customized, searchable library. Click and drag  PDFs on your computer into Papers and use Papers’ integrated search feature to look for new papers in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and more.  The Papers interface integrates features of other popular software packages to add value to the way you use scientific literature:

• Create smart folders that automatically update as you import new articles into your library.
• Use folders to organize related articles, and assign keywords to articles.
• Select, highlight, and write notes on articles or figures.
• Rate individual papers with a series of stars. 
• Use tabbed browsing to view and compare multiple articles simultaneously.

Individuals must purchase a license for Papers, and it is only available for Mac OS X 10.4 and higher.

The Global Infectious Disease & Epidemiology Network (GIDEON) is comprised of Diagnosis, Epidemiology, Therapy, and Microbiology modules. Modules include over 300 diseases, 10,000 notes outlining the status of specific infections for 200+ foreign countries, 1100 microbial taxa, and more than 300 antibacterial (-fungal, -parasitic, -viral) agents and vaccines. Data is taken from national health ministry reports, WHO technical reports, monographs, and journals. Results provide a ranked differential diagnosis that considers patient symptoms, travel, incubation period, laboratory test results, and immune status. Comparisons of clinical and laboratory features for two or more diseases are available.

Do you find yourself going to many different journal’s websites to read their tables of contents? Save time by signing up for alerts so the table of contents will automatically come to you. Nature journals offers this service. 

Simply register for an account to receive Table of Contents e-alerts. E-mail alerts save you time by sending an email to your inbox at the time of online publication, allowing you to browse the latest content immediately.

Set up a free account at Web of Knowledge to be notified when articles are cited. This can alert you to potential collaborators who are working on similar topics, assist you with locating articles on similar topics, and help you know how widely your work is being disseminated.

 The Web of Knowledge database (containing Science Citation Index and more) is interdisciplinary and includes citations to materials in the health and life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities.  Personalized accounts are free. Create one, and sign in on subsequent visits, by clicking the  button at the top of any page inside the Web of Knowledge database.

You can set up citation alerts to send you an email or subscribe to an RSS feed.  To set up an alert, search Web of Knowledge for the paper you wish to use as the subject of the alert. Click on the title of the paper to view the full record (see screenshot below of a full record).  

Click on the  button on the right-hand side of the page to set up an alert, which will be active for one year from the date of creation. You will receive an email whenever your article is cited by another article in the Web of Knowledge database.

To view all your alerts, subscribe to an RSS feed for a citation alert, or renew an alert for another year, click the  link at the top of any page inside the Web of Knowledge database.

Cold Spring Harbor (CSH) Protocols is a database that includes protocols covering cell and molecular biology, neuroscience, genetics, bioinformatics, imaging, and more. 

Users can subscribe via RSS feed for new protocols, topic introductions (articles that provide general and background information, theory and applications for methods), and information panels (smaller discrete pieces of information relevant to particular methods). Subscribing to an RSS feed will allow the information to come to you, rather than you having to seek it out yourself. 

Read more about RSS feeds in our blog post entitled Tools for keeping up: using RSS feeds and other features of resources.

On Tuesday July 1 we alerted you to access and link problems with Wiley Interscience e-journals. As of July 2, full access has been restored to all UCLA-subscribed Wiley Interscience e-journals. There are still remaining problems with links to individual articles. All UC-eLinks icons in databases, the UCLA Library Catalog, or on Library web pages have been modified to take you to the individual article. Other links may take you to the main Wiley Interscience web page. In this case, you will still be able to navigate to the individual journal web page and locate your needed article.

Our technical staff are working to resolve these problems as soon as possible.

If you experience any access or link problems to UCLA-subscribed content, please contact the Biomedical Library.

There’s an online place just for doctors, and it’s called Sermo. Sermo (their tagline is “Know more. Know earlier”) is a social networking site where MDs can hang out and talk to other MDs about what doctors talk about, like medical observations, questions, and opinions that contribute to medical knowledge.

Check out Sermo’s FAQ that addresses some popular questions, such as:

• How will my personal information be used?
• If I give an opinion about a medical question, is there any potential malpractice liability?
• How do I know that Sermo members are really MDs?

Want to know even more? Click the below picture to learn about their business model and understand how clients (health care, governmental, and financial institutions), who pay subscription fees, use Sermo to inform their decisions.

Want to see Sermo for yourself? Check out the tour.

Want to read what people are saying about it? Check out their news page.

And, if you decide to use it, please come back and let us know your experience with it by leaving a comment below. Also, if you know of other collaborative tools–such as one specifically for nurses, public health professionals, dentists–please let us know.

DynaMed is the physician-created, point of care resource providing evidence-based summaries for over 3,000 topics. Drugs, conditions, and medical procedures are covered in summaries relevant to all health care professionals. Each summary is clinically organized into sections providing etiology, diagnosis, prevention, prognosis, treatment options, and patient care handouts. DynaMed is written and edited by practicing physicians who monitor over 500 peer reviewed journals for new evidence. Content is updated frequently, and added content is ranked based on the strength of the supporting evidence. In addition to viewing DynaMed content online, UCLA affiliates can download DynaMed onto their PDA.

UCLA is experiencing access and linking problems for multiple e-journals on the Wiley Interscience platform. On July 1st, 2008, all e-journals previously published by Blackwell Synergy were transferred to Wiley Publishers. Due to this changeover, UCLA affiliates may be denied access to specific e-journal titles and the UC-eLinks service is not functioning optimally.

If you are unable to access an e-journal that UCLA subscribes to, please contact the Biomedical Library or your subject library.

If you are using UC-eLinks and click on the “Access this article online” link, you may be directed to the main page of Wiley Interscience rather than directly to the article. If this occurs, you will still be able to access the article. Browse by product type “journals,” use the alphabetical browse to navigate to the journal title, then navigate through the journal home page to the year, volume, and issue you require.

We are working to resolve these issues and restore full access and functionality as soon as possible.

Have you ever spent time creating an elaborate PubMed search and then sifting through the results to find the perfect articles?  Don’t you wish you could save your searches and selected articles so you didn’t have to go through that process all over again?  Well, you can by using PubMed’s My NCBI!

Use My NCBI to save searches and set up email alerts for saved searches on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.  You can also save multiple collections of articles (e.g., one collection for each research topic).

Do you normally use the same limits (e.g., specific age group, gender, publication type, publication date) for each search?  With My NCBI, you can choose filters that group search results so when you’re on the results page there will be a tab for each filter you’ve created.

Read PubMed’s My NCBI Help section for more information.  Let My NCBI save you time by streamlining the research process!