We recently launched a new (and most definitely improved) version of Synapse: Your Connection to MSK Authors. I am delighted to share that this “new version” handles author name disambiguation much better than the former version and ensures that MSK publications are “discoverable” by staff as well as all interested visitors and consumers of scholarly research.

Each month, we pull content from several commerical abstracting and indexing databases.  The next step is to vet references and confirm MSK affiliated authors. Once the association has been confirmed, the citation is ingested into the database.

This comprehensive database of linked data provides access to the intellectual output of our researchers, clinicians, nurses and healthcare professionals.  As the name implies, Synapse is the user’s point of “connection” to publications authored by Memorial Sloan-Kettering staff.

Synapse presents author profiles which include: photos (when available), research focuses, group affiliations, co-authors and citations to the published works.  Users can take advantage of RSS feeds to monitor new content added to Synapse for a specific author or group.

Synapse currently has over 6,600 items, dating from 2009 to present, and will continue to grow as new journal articles, books, book chapters, conference meeting abstracts and other  published references are added.  We have also started to populate Synapse with retrospective content from 1996 to 2008.

For specific questions concerning Synapse or to request a presentation at your next departmental meeting, please contact Bernadette Joe or send your comments to synapse@mskcc.org. You can learn more about this resource from Synapse’s About and FAQ pages.

If you haven’t seen this resource yet, click here to view — why wait!

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services