Category Archives: Resource Highlights

Showcasing resources from your library website

PubMed Central (PMC) Related Resources Feature

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In March of 2022, PMC launched its updated interface, which was intentionally designed to offer a familiar search experience for regular users of the new PubMed website (released in 2020). Learn more about the New PMC Website from NCBI Insights.

At the end of August 2022, they continue to add features that are much-appreciated by users of PubMed, namely the “Related Resources” functionality that is now available in both tools on the individual article record level. The PMC Related Resources feature includes three sections that a user may choose to expand and explore: 1) Similar articles, 2) Cited by other articles, and 3) Links to NCBI databases.

Below is the view of the Similar articles section expanded for a PMC article:

From the NLM Technical Bulletin:

PMC Releases Improved Related Resources Feature. NLM Tech Bull. 2022 Jul-Aug;(447):e4.

“Section 1: Similar articles. When expanded, this section displays a snapshot of articles from the PubMed database that are closely related to the one you are currently viewing (see Figure 2). The title, journal, and publication year of each article are displayed. You can click on an article title to navigate to its record on the PubMed site or click the “See all in PubMed” link to see the full list of similar articles in PubMed. When no similar articles are found, you’ll see a “No results available” message.

Section 2: Cited by other articles. When expanded, this section displays a snapshot of articles from the PubMed database that cite the article you are currently viewing. The title, journal, and publication year of each article is displayed. You can click on an article title to navigate to its record on the PubMed site or click the “See all in PubMed” link to see a full list of articles from PubMed that cite the one you are viewing. When no articles are found in PubMed that cite the article, you’ll see a “No results available” message.

Section 3: Links to NCBI databases. When expanded, this section displays links to records in other NCBI databases that relate to the current article you are viewing. You can click on the name of the NCBI database to navigate to a related record in that database. When there are no links to other NCBI databases available for the current article, you’ll see a “No results available” message.”

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!

Authoring Published Meeting Abstracts – Searching for Upcoming Conferences for Submitting Your Work

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There are a few approaches that you can take for identifying upcoming conferences that may be appropriate venues for sharing your preliminary research results (as a peer-reviewed paper or poster presentation).

  • One way is to search a database that contains information about the conferences/congresses themselves. Another way is to identify professional associations/organizations related to your discipline/field that would likely be responsible for organizing professional meetings, and then search the website of these organizations to look for announcements of their upcoming events and professional development opportunities.

For example, you can use a database like PubsHub that indexes Congresses and Associations:

PubsHub: https://libguides.mskcc.org/pubshub

Many people are familiar with PubsHub as they may have used it when trying to identify good journal contenders for manuscript submission. It’s a great tool to use for that purpose – it even has functionality that lets you easily compare the features of two different journal titles – but there are also parts of this database dedicated to Congresses and Associations.

  • Another effective way to find this information is to search on your favorite topic in a scholarly literature database that indexes conference proceedings, limit your search results to the Meeting Abstracts/Conference Proceedings publication type, and then note the names of the conferences where these meeting abstracts were submitted and accepted.

For example, you can search a database that indexes conference proceedings of interest and then look up the conference names included in the citations that are returned (from the citation record/published meeting abstracts records that were presented on topics related to yours) using another search tool (like Google) to investigate if those conferences/associations will soon be accepting abstract submissions for their next conference.

Resources available via the MSK Library that index conference proceedings/meeting abstracts include:

  1. Web of Science – https://libguides.mskcc.org/webofscience

  2. Northern Light Life Sciences Conference Abstracts – https://libguides.mskcc.org/northernlight

  3. Synapse – https://synapse.mskcc.org/synapse/works

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.

Cochrane RCT Classifier

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As anyone who has worked on a systematic review (SR) project can attest – the record screening process can be a frustratingly tedious and time-consuming one. If available, most reviewers would likely welcome some kind of automation that streamlines and potentially reduces the manual record screening portion of their SR workload.

What is an RCT classifier algorithm?

An RCT classifier algorithm is “a tool to help you sort out the non-RCTs so that you can focus your effort on studies more likely to be included in your review”. In other words, researchers working on SRs that specify in their protocol that only studies reporting on RCTs will be included can now take advantage of tools that help them predict – using an automated algorithm derived from machine learning – whether a study is using a possible RCT or a not an RCT study design. 

The research team behind the leading RCT classifier algorithm tool (which includes members of the EPPI-Centre and Cochrane) published a paper in May 2022 describing the development and evaluation of their tool:

Thomas J, McDonald S, Noel-Storr A, Shemilt I, Elliott J, Mavergames C, Marshall IJ. Machine learning reduced workload with minimal risk of missing studies: development and evaluation of a randomized controlled trial classifier for Cochrane Reviews. J Clin Epidemiol. 2021 May;133:140-151. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.11.003. Epub 2020 Nov 7. PMID: 33171275; PMCID: PMC8168828. 

The good news for our MSK community is that this RCT classifier functionality has already been incorporated into Covidence, the systematic review project management system that the MSK Library subscribes to and provides access to. To turn this function on in a review that they are working on, a team member will need to have first selected the “Medical and health sciences” option under the “Area of Research” drop-down menu. After choosing to create this kind of review, the option to “Automatically tag studies reporting on RCTs using the Cochrane RCT Classifier” will become visible for a user to decide to enable of not. If enabled (only works with titles that have >15 characters and abstracts that have >400 characters), their SR records will be tagged as “Possible RCT” or “Not RCT” and can be filtered accordingly.

Learn more about “How to tag studies not reporting on RCTs” by checking out this article from the Covidence knowledgebase.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.