Stay Informed!

Tools for Keeping Current with Research Publications in Your Field

July 14th, 2011 ROBIN FEATHERSTONE

In 1980, reading 1 RCT per day would keep you up to date…

http://trusttheevidence.net/carl-heneghan/how-many-randomized-trials-are-published-each-year

How many RCTs would you have to read today?

How do you stay informed?

Agenda

Email Alerts

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Objectives

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

1.Set up email alerts that match your areas of interest

2.Subscribe and manage RSS feeds using a reader

How do alerts work?

• AMED• BIOSIS• CINAHL• EMBASE• Medline• PubMed• PsycINFO• Scopus• Web of Science

Which health sciences databases offer alerts?

What kind of alerts can I set up?

1. TOPIC: Receive recent articles on a topic of interest

2. eToC: Receive electronic Table of Contents for a key journal in your field

3. AUTHOR: Monitor an important author’s work4. CITATION: Keep track of citations to a particular

paper

Demo - Topic Alert

Search PubMed for recent RCTs on gastric endoscopic ultrasonography

Exercise – Topic Alert

1. Create an account with MyNCBI2. Search PubMed for Reviews published on

withdrawal times for colonoscopies (or a topic of interest to you)

3. Set up an email alert for new abstracts on the first Monday of each month

Demo – eToC (Table of Contents)

Set up an eTOC for the Journal of Neurosurgical Anesthesiology

Exercise – eTOC (Table of Contents)

• Subscribe to the eTOC for the journal Cardiovascular Research using either the publisher’s website or …

1.Use Single Citation Matcher in PubMed to search for the contents of the journal

2.Save your search3.Set up a monthly alert using MyNCBI

Demo – Author Alert

Set up an alert to tell you when new articles are published by Simon N. Young from McGill

Exercise – Author Alert

Set up an alert to tell you when new articles are published by Beth S. Rachlis from the

University of Toronto

Demo – Citation Alert

Set up an alert in Scopus to tell you when the following article is referenced:

Liberman, M., Liberman, D., Sampalis, J. S., & Mulder, D. S. (2006). Delays to surgery in non-small-cell lung cancer. Canadian Journal of Surgery, 49(1), 31-36.

Exercise

Create an account and set up an alert in Scopus to tell you when the following paper is cited:

Williams, M. (2008). Infection control and prevention in perioperative practice. Journal of Perioperative Practice, 18(7), 274-278.

10 min break

RSS = Really Simple Syndication

http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/02/keeping_up.html

http://commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

How does RSS work?1. Register for a

“feeder” (e.g., Google Reader)

2. Subscribe to “feeds”

3. Review and organize your feeds in your feeder

Demo – RSS from PubMed

Search PubMed to find published articles from University of Toronto in the journals

Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Gut

Create and RSS feed of your search and add it to your feeder.

Exercise – RSS from PubMed

1. Create an account (if you don’t already have one) for an RSS Reader

2. Search PubMed to find published articles from McGill in the journals Annals of Surgery,

Endoscopy and American Journal of Transplantation

3. Create an RSS feed of your search and add it to your feeder

Demo – RSS from the Web

Some excellent RSS feeds:http://firstwatch.jwatch.org/http://www.cmaj.ca/rss/http://www.imedicalapps.com/feed/

… and many, many more

Recap

• You would have to read ____ articles everyday to keep up with the number of published RCTs

• You can subscribe to eTOCS through a journal’s website or ______

• To use RSS you need a ______ & a ______• Use _____ to create a citation search• It makes your librarian very happy when you

fill out your ______