Category Archives: Resource Highlights

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25 Years of MedlinePlus

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The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)’s consumer health information online resource, MedlinePlus, just turned 25 years old! For a historical look back – see:

25 Years of Consumer Health Information: MedlinePlus Celebrates Its Silver Anniversary – NLM Musings from the Mezzanine (nih.gov)

Soon after NLM made the PubMed database (a free index to the biomedical and life sciences literature aimed primarily at health care professionals and researchers) available in 1996, NLM realized that the need for accessible and authoritative health information extended beyond health professionals to the general public.

And so MedlinePlus.gov came online starting in Fall 1998 and has continued to grow and evolve ever since.

Some noteworthy MdlinePlus enhancements over the years have been the inclusion of quality health information in Spanish, information about herbs and supplements, drug information summaries, medical test summaries, information about genes and genetics conditions, healthy recipes, and over 1000 health topics.

Most recently, in 2020, another NLM resource, Genetics Home Reference (GHR), was incorporated into MedlinePlus in the form of the MedlinePlus Genetics module that includes easy-to-understand “Help Me Understand Genetics” pages intended for patients.

Also worthy of highlighting have been NLM’s efforts to expand the reach of this valuable consumer health information by creating MedlinePlus Connect, “a free service that links electronic health records (EHRs), patient portals, and other health IT systems to relevant, authoritative, and up-to-date health information from NLM’s MedlinePlus health information resource and other NIH websites.” To understand how MedlinePlus Connect works, click here. The National Cancer Institute has also collaborated “to expand the scope of content in MedlinePlus Connect”.

Learn more:

Burgess S, Dennis S, Lanka S, Miller N, Potvin J. MedlinePlus Connect: Linking Health IT Systems to Consumer Health Information. IT Prof. 2012 May;14(3):22-28. doi: 10.1109/mitp.2012.19. PMID: 23066351; PMCID: PMC3469315.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!

ScienceDirect Generative AI Pilot

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Through our relationship with Elsevier and early participation in trial testing of Scopus AI, MSK was selected from a small group of research institutions to pilot early versions of GenAI features in ScienceDirect.

Currently in its Alpha phase, the ScienceDirect integrated GenAI tool may evolve throughout the trial period, which is expected to end late August 2024.

Features of the GenAI Tool:

  • Enhanced Search: Provides a fast and efficient approach to information retrieval. Using natural language processing (NLP) capabilities and machine learning algorithms, this tool distills key insights from peer-reviewed content, accelerating the research process.
  • Questions and Answers on the Article Page: This feature aims to help researchers find information faster and more efficiently by providing an at-a-glance view of key questions each article addresses. It includes direct links to relevant content in the full text for easy reference.
  • Reading Assistant: Functions like a per-document Q&A tool.

Access to the GenAI Tool:

These early versions, built on a selection of full-text journal and book content in the Life Sciences, can help researchers extract insights connected to their research question, either from one paper or from the entire corpus of content covered in this pilot. Each insight can be immediately traced back to its source paper or book chapter. More than 30 subject-matter experts have helped Elsevier refine the feature to ensure that the generated output is reliable, relevant, and accurate.

Elsevier will be collecting in-product feedback and surveys. Internally, we plan to work with users to get additional feedback. Your participation and feedback are valued.

If you have any questions regarding the pilot, please feel free to contact Mark Monakey at monakeym@mskcc.org.  

Publication Integrity Checking – Is it necessary?

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A topic being discussed with increasing regularity in the scientific literature is whether scholarly authors need to start personally assessing the publication integrity of the papers that they cite in their research, similarly to how they currently take steps to assess the risk of bias of individual studies being considered for inclusion in their research syntheses.

A team from New Zealand and the United Kingdom have been researching this issue for a while now, with their latest commentary piece appearing in the August 2024 issue of Nature:

  • Grey A, Avenell A, Klein AA, Byrne JA, Wilmshurst P, Bolland MJ. Stop just paying lip service on publication integrity. Nature. 2024 Aug;632(8023):26-28. doi: 10.1038/d41586-024-02449-8. PMID: 39075213.
  • Bolland, M. J., Avenell, A., & Grey, A. (2024). Publication integrity: what is it, why does it matter, how it is safeguarded and how could we do better? Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.2024.2325004
  • Avenell, A., Bolland, M. J., Gamble, G. D., & Grey, A. (2022). A randomized trial alerting authors, with or without coauthors or editors, that research they cited in systematic reviews and guidelines has been retracted. Accountability in Research, 31(1), 14–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2022.2082290
  • Bolland MJ, Grey A, Avenell A, Klein AA. Correcting the scientific record – A broken system? Account Res. 2021 Jul;28(5):265-279. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2020.1852938. Epub 2020 Dec 8. PMID: 33205666.

This group clearly thinks publication integrity checking is necessary, even introducing “The ‘REAPPRAISED’ checklist for evaluation of publication integrity” in an earlier Nature comment, see:

  • Grey A, Bolland MJ, Avenell A, Klein AA, Gunsalus CK. Check for publication integrity before misconduct. Nature. 2020 Jan;577(7789):167-169. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-03959-6. PMID: 31911697.

    Tip: A PDF version of THE ‘REAPPRAISED’ CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATION OF PUBLICATION INTEGRITY is available for download.

As there is of yet no consensus on which checklist tool is best, other groups have made similar attempts to create a research publication integrity assessment tool, for example:

See details of their RIA tool in:

  •  Figure 1 – PMC (nih.gov) – Hierarchical work flow and decision tree of the Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) tool.
  • Table 1 – PMC (nih.gov) – Critical and important criteria for a Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) of RCTs investigating IMPs for evidence syntheses.

Questions? Be sure to Ask Us at the MSK Library!