Category Archives: About Resources

Now Available Online: Research In Review: An Analysis of MSK Publications 2016-2020

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The Synapse team led by Jeanine McSweeney, Associate Librarian, Scholarly Communications, publishes annually the Synapse Publications reports, showcasing our authors’ contributions to the body of scientific knowledge and their research and clinical activities associated with Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center.

This year I am delighted to share that we have added a new report entitled, “Research In Review: An Analysis of MSK Publications 2016-2020,” which dives deeper into the publications affiliated with the Center. This report provides insight into the variety of existing metrics used to measure research impact at an article-, journal-, or author-level. In the period covered in this report, the Synapse team retrieved and curated over 25,500 works, and it is with these citations that we share one aspect of a very complex research story. This report highlights the demographics of our author community, existing metrics, and how research impact is gauged. In addition, we share interesting facts about publication-related datasets gleaned from a variety of credible resources such as PubMed Central® (PMC). Our intentions in producing this report are simply to raise awareness of possible ways in which to view research contributions.

Synapse is a public-facing resource and the authoritative bibliographic database of MSK publications, developed and maintained by a team of skilled librarians. This database provides a record of the intellectual output written by MSK researchers, clinicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.

We hope in the future to produce other “Research In Review” type publications.  Please feel free to reach out to me to share your thoughts about this report.

Donna Gibson
Director, Library Services

Automated MeSH Indexing in PubMed

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This year the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is transitioning the process of MeSH indexing in PubMed from manual to automated.

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) are assigned to MEDLINE citations for the purposes of enriching the metadata and increasing discoverability.

Until 2022 MeSH indexing was done by human indexers at the National Library of Medicine. Starting 2022 human indexers will only oversee and troubleshoot MeSH indexing.

One of the major benefits of automating the process of MeSH indexing is almost instant appearance of MeSH in MEDLINE citations in PubMed. With manual indexing this was delayed for a few months on average. Citations awaiting MeSH indexing were called In Process citations which could be found by keyword searches only.

The downside of automated MeSH indexing, at least in the beginning, could be, potentially, increase in indexing errors. The NLM will be engaged in the ongoing improvement of MeSH indexing algorithm.

Read more about the transition.

Can I Trust this Publisher? Is this Journal Reputable?

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New journal titles continue to appear on the scholarly publishing landscape on a regular basis, and more and more of them are choosing to follow an open access (OA) publishing model. What distinguishes these OA journals is that, unlike “traditional” journals that follow a model where the author transfers their copyrights to the publisher but does not pay a publication fee, OA journals generally charge Article Processing Charges (APCs) and allow the authors to retain their copyrights to the published work.

One of the unintended negative consequences of the “author-pays” OA model has been the introduction of “predatory” publishers into this landscape. Predatory publishers mislead authors into thinking that their journal provides a rigorous peer review and high-quality scholarly publication process, when in fact, the operation is really just a scam to collect author article processing charges that provides little in return in terms of legitimate peer-reviewed journal article publishing author services. Bottom line for authors – there is no benefit or reward to be had by the author for publishing their research in a publication that is not reputable – only negative consequences (i.e., a waste of their valuable scholarly efforts).

It basically comes down to a consumer protection issue, with the Federal Trade Commission even going after some of the biggest offenders and winning a $50 million court judgment in 2019. Beyond getting individually scammed, there are broader societal implications of contributing to this “publication-pollution” – in the words of NYC Ethicist, Arthur Caplan –  as he described in his 2015 article where he discusses why it is so important for the sake of trust in research that everyone do their part to mitigate the threat of predatory publishing.

What can MSK authors do to verify that a journal is reputable?

The MSK Library’s “Support for Authors” LibGuide includes a variety of both subscription and free resources that can be used to investigate the legitimacy of a journal. The “Evaluating Journal Quality” MSK Library class provides training and live demonstrations of many of these resources that can help authors determine if a potential journal publisher is trustworthy.

Authors can also look for guidance using a resource called Think. Check. Submit, a tool even endorsed by the NIH (see NOT-OD-18-011: Statement on Article Publication Resulting from NIH Funded Research).

 From their website: About | Think. Check. Submit. (thinkchecksubmit.org)

Think. Check. Submit. helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research. Through a range of tools and practical resources, this international, cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.