Monthly Archives: December 2015

Latest on Brain Cancer, Scalp Cooling and More….

Posted on by

Surfing the Web uncovered these news items worth sharing:

  • Scientists at Massachusetts General have discovered genetic disruption in DNA with brain tumors. It appears that the merging of genetic neighborhoods in brain cells caused them to ultimately become cancerous. More on this finding in Nature.
  • Using mathematics and computational modeling, researchers at Stony Brook University have found quantitative evidence to prove that risk factors such as environmental exposure and behaviors contribute to the development of a variety of cancers. This study was also published in Nature. Continue reading →

Article-Level Metrics, Citation Metrics, Altmetrics, Bibliometrics… What Does it all Mean?

Posted on by

When it comes to measuring the impact, influence, or relevance of a given article, many researchers look to the metrics surrounding that publication. Metrics, in this case, refers to the number of times a paper has been cited by other investigators (AKA – cited references). Another way to gauge the impact of a paper is via Altmetrics, a relatively new way of examining the social media coverage and lay press surrounding published research. Both modes of evaluating article-level metric information is acceptable, each with their own benefits and shortcomings. Discovering metrics about an article is commonly referred to by the umbrella term known as bibliometrics. Follow the steps below for some hands-on experience with each of these citation metric methods and try incorporating them into your research workflow!

Continue reading →

Confirming that a Journal is Indexed in Medline and/or PubMed

Posted on by

With so many new journal titles appearing each year, it is becoming more and more difficult to determine the quality and legitimacy of new scholarly publications. One often overlooked search tool that is useful for confirming whether – and to what extent – a journal is being indexed in MEDLINE and PubMed or both is: Journals in NCBI Databases. (NCBI stands for the National Center for Biotechnology Information.)

This resource can be accessed under “More Resources” from the PubMed homepage and is essentially a search of the (National Library of Medicine or NLM) NLM’s catalog limited to the subset of journals that are referenced in NCBI database records.

There are essentially three statuses that a journal can have in PubMed:

  • Every article in the journal is indexed in the Medline database (ie. Index Medicus) and PubMed.  PubMed was created to be the free public search interface to the Medline database so all Medline records will appear in PubMed. Medline records are also leased by other commercial databases, for example EMBASE, Scopus, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Clinical Trials (CENTRAL), so being indexed in MEDLINE will give a journal article maximum visibility.
    Index medicus: v8n1, 2014-
    MEDLINE: v8n1, 2014-
    PubMed: v8n1, 2014-
    Currently indexed for MEDLINE. Continue reading →