Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Finding OA papers in medicine

Sandra Porter, Finding scientific papers for free, part I, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, May 21, 2007.  Excerpt:   

This three part series covers the problem of finding scientific articles, compares results from a few different methods, and presents instructions for the best method.

A day in the life of an English physician

In April, I had the great fortune to attend (and speak at) a conference on scientific publishing sponsored by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. One of the first speakers was an English physician who described his trials and a typical ordeal in trying to use the medical literature....

This doctor, a thoughtful and well meaning young man, had reviewed the X-ray results for one of his patients. She listened quietly and asked if him if her results could mean lung cancer.  He went to the internet to find out.

First, he tried PubMed.

But many of the papers were in journals that he couldn't access because his hospital didn't have subscriptions.

Next, he tried Google.

But his Google results all seemed to be same, and they failed to provide his answer.

Last, he tried Google scholar and finally found a place to begin. Luckily, he happened on a paper, written by someone that he knew worked in the field....

The talk was over and it was time for questions. One of audience member, an older gentlemen with a crisp English accent, angrily questioned the young man, in disbelief. How could it be that he, a doctor, couldn't access this information? Surely, he must have access through his University?

Calmly and carefully, the young physician explained that he worked in a hospital, run by the National Health Service. Yes, he said, he could access publications if he were at the University....

Furthermore, he explained that the computer he uses is situated in a central work station, shared with the nurses, and other doctors; and used for multiple tasks. With others waiting to access to patient records, check medication details, and review lab results, it's impossible for him to monopolize the computer for more than a few minutes at a time....

I sat in the audience, simply amazed. Not that he couldn't access information for free, mind you, but that he didn't know how to find freely accessible information in PubMed....

Also see Part II: comparing methods:

Today, we do an experiment with PubMed and PubMed Central to determine the best way to search for free articles....

I searched either PubMed or PubMed Central through the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) with the term "cancer." Then, I either limited the search (using Limits, shown as "PubMed Limits" in my graphs below) or I used the Display menu to filter the results (shown as "PubMed PMC" links in the table). Last, I sorted the results by date to see which search method gave the newest publications....

In my experiment, only 11 percent of the articles that I found [in PubMed] were freely available, and that was when I used the best method....

The least successful method was to use the PMC links filter....

If I searched PubMed Central directly, I obtained more articles, but the most recent articles were from May. My PubMed search, on the other hand, had located articles, from June. (Yes, June hasn't happened yet, but some articles can be found before they're officially published.).

Overall, I found the best method, with the most results, was to use PubMed and limit the articles to those with free full text. While it's certainly true that 219,985 articles are way too many for me to read, at least I know I'm getting the most recent articles, and that I will be able to view the articles that I choose to investigate.

Plus, one of the tabs limits the results to review articles....