Posts are written by library staff and reflect their personal opinions not necessarily those of MSK.
If you’ve visited PubMed lately, chances are you’ve noticed it has a new look and feel. The “new” PubMed is now the default search interface for PubMed, replacing the legacy version. In addition to a new look, the new PubMed offers a mobile optimized site and new search features.
Want to learn more about the new PubMed? Register for our next open workshop on May 20.
And remember, if you have questions or need help with the new PubMed, just Ask Us!
I am delighted to present to our readers and library users our Library Report (13.15 MB), highlighting our activities for 2018 and 2019. This report is a celebration of our accomplishments over the last two years as we share information about our operations, services, usage metrics, and staff publications.
I think our user community and external colleagues will enjoy reading a few stories that illustrate our impact on the Center — how we support the Ethics Committee and Evidence-based Cancer Imaging program, contributed to a new educational initiative, started the ground work for launching our Research Data Management Services, or provided a forum where we discussed scholarly communications topics by bringing journal editors and MSK authors together to share their publishing experiences.
Most of all, I hope this report will spark interest in MSK staff to take a few moments to explore a new resource, service, or call us to help support a team project. If you want to learn more about the MSK Library or the services we provide, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services
The scholarly communication landscape, especially over the last five years, has been changing rapidly. A noteworthy “new kid on the block” that has recently seen a big increase in availability, visibility, and use, is a category of resource type often referred to as “Interim Research Products”.
Interim research products are basically research documents that are shared publicly prior to their final publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. In other words – keeping in mind that there are multiple definitions by different stakeholders that continue to evolve in this space – they are: research products that become part of the public scientific record without yet having been confirmed by peer review.
Most common among them are preprints and preregistered protocols. Recent discussions of these two types of interim research products that may be of interest:
1: Xu J, Zhang L. Will Medical Preprints Change Oncology Practice? JAMA Oncol.2020 Feb 20. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2019.5972. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID:32077893.
2: Schiavo JH. PROSPERO: An International Register of Systematic Review Protocols. Med Ref Serv Q. 2019 Apr-Jun;38(2):171-180. doi:10.1080/02763869.2019.1588072. PubMed PMID: 31173570.
Funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), among others, have started encouraging the use of interim research products as they may potentially improve the rigor of research work and speed up the dissemination of research results, not to mention allow for more transparency in the research process.
For example, the rapid sharing and dissemination of research findings is a critical goal of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative as a way to accelerate cancer research. Specified in their documentation is the requirement “that all publications and data resulting from Cancer Moonshot funded initiatives will be required to be immediately accessible“.
From their Cancer Moonshot Public Access and Data Sharing Policy website:
“Much of the urgency highlighted by the Cancer Moonshot and in the Blue Ribbon Panel’s recommendations to the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB) in 2016 emphasizes that the rapid availability of cancer publications and the primary data behind it promotes dissemination of new knowledge, enhances reproducibility, and accelerates the ability of researchers to build upon cancer research to make new discoveries.”
With this aim in mind, the Cancer Moonshot Initiative uses a broader definition of “publication” and “publish” than is traditionally used on their funding information website, and one that is more inclusive of interim research products. More specifically:
For more information about finding and citing interim research products, be sure to Ask Us at the MSK Library.