Author Archives: Dina

JBI SUMARI Systematic Review Software

Posted on by

The MSK Library supports researchers working on systematic review (SR) projects with a variety of resources and services and training opportunities. An additional SR tool option available to MSK users, that is included as part of the library’s subscription to the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) EBP Database (OVID), is an “EBP Tool” called JBI SUMARI.

According to the vendor:

This comprehensive software suite has been developed to assist users on developing, conducting and reporting on systematic reviews of evidence related to the feasibility, appropriateness, meaningfulness and effectiveness of health care interventions or professional activities.  

Similar to Covidence (another systematic review project management software tool currently available to MSK researchers), JBI SUMARI includes functionality for: Project Management, Protocol Builder, Import of Studies, Study Screening, Assessment of Risk of Bias, Data Extraction, Data Synthesis, and Report Writing. To learn more about what you can do with JBI SUMARI and how it can be used in conjunction with Covidence (to make the most of certain functionality that may be missing in one or the other of these tools), be sure to read this published review:

Piper C. System for the Unified Management, Assessment, and Review of Information (SUMARI). J Med Libr Assoc. 2019 Oct;107(4):634–6. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2019.790. Epub 2019 Oct 1. PMCID: PMC6774554. 

The JBI SUMARI Knowledge Base is also a great place to look for guidance on using this tool. Two areas worth noting where JBI SUMARI differentiates itself from Covidence are with its built-in Protocol Builder capabilities and its Synthesis functionality – features that are currently not available in Covidence.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!  

Proximity Search Functionality Added to PubMed

Posted on by

With over 35 million records indexed in PubMed, finding exactly the information you need in an efficient way can often prove challenging for many searchers. To help with this, NLM recently added a new search capability to the PubMed search interface called “proximity searching”. In a nutshell, proximity searching is when a search interface allows the user to look for records containing two different search terms of interest, while specifying how far part these two terms can be from one another in the title and/or abstract of the citation record.

This relational specificity allows the searcher to conduct a broader search (with more search results returned) than they would if they were phrase searching. A proximity search would also return a narrower (smaller) set of results than if the two search terms were being picked up by the search engine having appeared anywhere in the text, regardless of the distance between each other.

This ability to increase the precision of search results is what makes proximity searching a useful capability to have in the PubMed search interface toolbox. For detailed instructions and screenshots illustrating how PubMed’s proximity searching works, be sure to check out the following links:

Questions?

Be sure to Ask Us or attend an upcoming MSK Library PubMed training session.

NIH Preprint Pilot to Include Preprints Reporting On All NIH-funded Research Starting In Early 2023

Posted on by

Launched 35 years ago in August 1997, PubMed reached the remarkable milestone of adding its 35 millionth citation on December 12th, 2022. Contributing to that content since June 2020 have been the “more than 3,300 preprints reporting NIH-supported COVID-19 research discoverable in PubMed Central (PMC) and PubMed”.

The good news for authors is that the number preprints added to PubMed will continue to grow since:

“The success of the pilot has encouraged NLM to extend the pilot in a second phase to launch in early 2023 that will encompass all preprints reporting on NIH-funded research. For preprints that are authored by NIH-funded researchers and voluntarily posted to eligible preprint servers on or after January 1, 2023, NLM will automatically include the full text of the preprint (as license terms allow) and associated citation information available in PMC and PubMed, respectively.”

For more detailed information from the NIH/NLM – see:

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!