Archive for January, 2010

Updates sent to Twitter, January 2010

January 31, 2010 at 11:21 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged ,

Updates related to OA, sent to Twitter during January 2010:

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More about UKPMC

January 21, 2010 at 1:12 am · Filed under Open Access

UKPubMedCentral – an Open Access digital library of biomedical science by Douglas Kell, Professor Douglas Kell’s blog, January 18, 2010. Excerpt:

To address the linked problems of accessing and then exploiting the biomedical literature, a variety of scientific funders in the UK have in the first place, and over time, been developing the wherewithal to make as many abstracts and full papers as possible available to all (“Open Access”), by mirroring a similar initiative led from the USA as PubMedCentral. The second problem is necessarily addressed by appropriate computer software that ‘reads’ all of the papers and develops methods of ranking and presenting appropriate analyses, and here the UK version has now developed some important innovations, based not least on the methods of text mining.

Comment: As noted in the FAQ “How does UK PubMed Central differ from PubMed and PubMed Central?“: “Unlike PubMed Central, UKPMC provides a single point of access to not only full-text articles but additionally the abstracts available through PubMed. The UKPMC interface offers different features and functionality. The UKPMC service has been designed and built in close consultation with researchers within the UK.”

The features of the beta version of UKPMC are summarized at: “About UK PubMed Central“. For example, UK PubMed Central Plus (UKPMC+) can be used by researchers who have a grant awarded by any of the UKPMC funders to:

* view Web of Science and Scopus citation counts for their publications
* report on the outcomes of their grants
* link publications to grants
* submit their manuscripts

It can be anticipated that PMC Canada will, as it’s developed further, provide features and functionality of value to researchers within Canada, and especially (at least initially) to researchers supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), one of the partners involved in the development of PMC Canada.

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Preliminary data about CIHR-supported publications cited in PubMed

January 8, 2010 at 1:29 am · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged , , ,

Technical Bulletin No. 372 of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) was posted on January 5, 2010. Excerpt:

Effective mid-October 2009, when a published article has an acknowledgement of funding support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), that information is added to the PubMed journal citation.

At present, a search using the country name alone (a search on ‘canada [gr]’) retrieves the relevant records, because CIHR is the only Canadian organization in the Grant Number field in PubMed at this time.

Thus, it’s now feasible to obtain, via PubMed, data that will provide  indicators of compliance with the Policy on Access to Research Outputs of the CIHR. This policy “applies to all grants awarded January 1, 2008 and onward, which have received funding in whole or in part from CIHR“.

For example, the Advanced Search option in PubMed can be used to obtain an estimate of the total number of CIHR-supported publications with a publication date in the last 2 months of 2009. The result (search #1): 867.

Of these, links to ‘free full text’ were available for a total of (search#2): 82 (9.5% of 867). Of these 82 publications, 23 (28%) were published in PLoS ONE (search#3).

Analogous data can be obtained for several topics (such as ‘Cancer’). Total number of cancer-related (and CIHR-supported) publications with a publication date in the last 2 months of 2009 (search #4):  221. Number of these for which links to ‘free full text’ were available (search #5): 23 (10% of 221). Of these 23 publications, 7 (30%) were published in PLoS ONE (search #6). (The other 16 articles were distributed across 14 different journals).

Comment: As the Policy on Access to Research Outputs of the CIHR is implemented, one can expect to see an increase in the percentage of CIHR-supported publications (cited in PubMed) for which links to ‘free full text’ will be available. As noted in NLM Technical Bulletin No. 372:

A PubMed Central Canada manuscript submission system will be implemented in early 2010. This will be another source for grant information from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

(Note: the link to PMC Canada in the current version of NLM Technical Bulletin No. 372 is corrupted).

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