Resource Highlights: Q-Sensei Scholar

By now we’re all pretty familiar with Google Scholar as a helpful search engine for finding scholarly information on the web. An up and coming competitor to the Google Scholar enterprise is Q-Sensei Scholar. This online tool is also a meta-search engine that’s designed to pick up scholarly articles and proceedings from a set number of  reputable sources. Here’s the list for your reference:

  • arXiv – preprints of scientific papers in the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, and Statistics
  • Ingenta Connect – scholarly Financial and Business content
  • Library of Congress – books of all fields
  • PubMed – journal articles in the Life and Biomedical Sciences
  • RePEc – research papers, working papers, preprints, and journal articles in Economics

Q-Sensei Scholar also offers users the option of creating a free account to track, save, and monitor customized searches. Take a look at the FAQ page for more information on registering as well as other unique features of the search engine.

Open Access Week 2013

International Open Access (OA) Week takes place this year from October 21 to October 27, 2013, with events taking place all over the world to raise awareness of what open access means for research and researchers.

This year’s theme is “Open Access: Redefining Impact” and focuses on how open and immediate access to scholarly research and the right to use and re-use results, have the potential to transform the way research is conducted. Understanding alternative metrics (altmetrics) is another way to measure the reach and exposure of one’s research in addition to simply monitoring how many times a published article is cited. While citation counts have value, the Internet has provided a means to explore social media and other communication channels where scholarly publications can be tracked for a more immediate response to the research shared.  To better understand altmetrics, visit the Public Library of Science (PLoS) webpage for an overview or you can join a group on Mendeley that discusses new approaches to the assessment of scholarly impact.

The MSKCC Library is committed to the principles of open access to scholarly peer-reviewed literature as a means to accelerate scientific discovery and improve patient care. This year, the  Library website will feature during Open Access Week, open access publications by MSK authors in our Today’s Science Sparks section.  You can also look for the open access button in the Today’s Science Sparks archives.

In addition, we want to take a moment and remind our user community that we have an Open Access LibGuide — highlighting resources and sites of interest.

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services

MSKCC in the News: October 3 – October 16

  • PMLive announced that the non-profit Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute (Tri-I TDI) will bring together scientists from MSKCC, Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medical College and will focus on basic research and early-stage drug discovery up to the ‘proof-of-concept’ stage.
  • MSKCC’s Dr. Renier J. Brentjens was quoted in a New York Times article that outlined the impact that new immunotherapies have had on treating patients with melanoma, kidney, lung, breast, ovarian cancer and cancers of the colon, stomach, and head and neck.
  • Dr. Peter Bach of MSKCC was quoted in a New York Times article about the soaring costs of prescription drugs.
  • MSKCC’s vice president and CIO Patricia C. Skarulis and her colleagues commented on MSKCC’s data sources and strategies in Healthcare Informatics.