HSLIC News

The NIH Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research (”the Policy”) became mandatory on April 7, 2008. The law states:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

The Policy requires that investigators who publish on NIH-funded research must now submit a final copy of accepted manuscript to PubMedCentral, the NIH’s repository of full text journal articles. (Note: PubMed Central® is not PubMed®. PubMed is the NIH’s repository of citations of journal articles from the world’s biomedical literature. Although it may contain links to full text articles, these are not stored in PubMed itself).

What does this mean for the average UNM investigator who publishes on NIH-funded research? With the new law, authors are now required to maintain non-exclusive copyright to their articles when they are published. This is necessary so that the author has the right to deposit a copy of the article in PubMed Central–essentially “publishing” in another venue. Retaining some copyright ownership is probably the most difficult part of the process authors will encounter when trying to comply with the Policy. Traditionally, journal publishers have required the author to sign a copyright agreement, often stipulating that the author sign over “exclusive” copyright to the publisher. Because of this exclusivity, the author gave away all of their rights to his/her own work.

As another result of this exclusivity, the results of much NIH-funded research have become difficult to access for the average citizen, unless they or an institution with which they are affiliated subscribes to the journal of interest. This practice has effectively kept the majority of the world’s biomedical research from the majority of practicing physicians and the public at large. It is easy for us faculty at UNM to forget that most folks are not affiliated with a major academic institution and don’t have access to the journal subscriptions paid for by our libraries. In fact, the Policy was put into law primarily because various citizen taxpayer groups lobbied Congress to make publicly-funded research results accessible by the public.

At the same time, the rate of price increases for journal subscriptions has been significantly greater than the rate of budget increases for health sciences libraries. The growing gap between journal costs and libraries’ ability to pay for subscriptions has created a “crisis in scholarly communication” in that most libraries around the country cannot continue to afford the same number of journal subscriptions from year to year. The following graph illustrates the recent historical cost of biomedical journals (Inflation Rate) compared to the size of the UNM Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center budget for journals (Periodicals Budget):

Clearly if this trend continues, the number of library journal subscriptions available to faculty will be dramatically reduced. By participating in the Policy, an investigator can take heart in the fact that the results of his or her research will be more accessible to the entire global population than if published in the “traditional” manner. This benefits the investigator as more people will have access to their published work. Arguably, the rate of scientific discovery will be increased as more people have faster access to more of the world’s biomedical research results.

The UNM Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) is committed to helping all UNM investigators who publish on NIH-funded research to comply successfully with the Policy. Accordingly, HSLIC has created an interactive web site to help authors navigate the Policy compliance process. Individual, one-on-one consultation with a medical librarian can also be arranged if authors have specific questions. See the following link for a great deal of help and information on the Policy: HSLIC Scholarly Communication Initiative.

Philip J. Kroth, MD, MS
Director Health Sciences Informatics Program Development

By now, most of us have heard of MySpace and Facebook. Social networks help people find others who share similar interests, with the intent to form friendships around those commonalities. Social networking isn’t just for teenagers anymore. Enter one of the first social network services to offer professional collaboration opportunities in biomedicine and research - BioMedExperts

The information behind this search engine was harvested from the 6 million articles and their metadata from the most recent ten years of PubMed. Locating authors and subjects (or yourself!) is easy. The subject or keyword search reveals the most prolific authors in a given subject area. Searching by location offers a choice of 146 countries and the authors who are based there.

Authors represented in BioMedExperts are able to create an account and update the profile that was built for them by the underlying software. Even if you aren’t published in the last ten years in Pubmed, you can create an account and manually add authors whose work are of interest to you.

The image below shows the profile for HSLIC’s own Jonathan Eldredge. Not only can I click on the Publications tab for the citations, but I can also see Jon’s co-authors, which could lead me to more colleagues with similar interests.

One of the more visually appealing aspects of the site is the ability to look at a graphic representation of an author’s connection with other authors and co-authors, as shown in the image below.

According to a press release on the company’s website, “Over $20B a year in (NIH) federal grant funding will now be analyzed by the BioMedExperts platform. The agreement also enables all the NIH Institutes to utilize the company’s software for categorization, search, expertise identification, discovery and analysis of text-based content. Content examples include publications, grants, patents and other scientific works and information.” NIH is already using BioMedExperts to locate expert reviewers.

I was unable to find a way to combine concepts to create a more focused retrieval. Maybe that is something that will be added in time as the product evolves. I think that would add greatly to the functionality.

At this time, BioMedExperts is completely free to use. You can see it for yourself at: http://www.biomedexperts.com/

Christee King, MLS, AHIP
Collection Management & Special Projects Librarian

Just a reminder that Journal Citation Reports for 2006 is available to HSC user via the Web of Knowledge resource. Both the Science and Social Sciences editions for 2006 are available.

Journal citation reports are used to find data on the “impact” of a certain journal. The impact factor measures how often the “average article” within a particular journal has been cited in the past two years. The higher the journal’s impact factor, the more influential the journal is supposed to be within its field.

However, sometimes journal impact factor information is used to assess the quality of a journal and its contents or to determine the influence of a researcher and their work. It is these uses of the metric which have caused controversy and debate, as many feel journal impact factors have too large an influence on hiring, tenure, publishing, and funding decisions–something they were not designed or meant to do.

A recent addition to the ongoing debate is an editorial which appeared several months ago in the Journal of Cell Biology, which questioned the data used to determine impact factors. The editorial “Show me the Data” by Rossner, Van Epps and Hill, appeared in December 2007 (vol. 179, issue 6, pages 1091-1092) (available online here to UNM faculty, students, and staff).

Thomson Scientific, who produces the impact factor material, has posted a reply to the December editorial. See “Thomson Scientific Corrects Inaccuracies in Editorial” at http://scientific.thomson.com/citationimpactforum/8427045/

A follow up editorial, “Irreproducible Results: a response to Thomson Scientific” has since appeared in the January 28 issue of Journal of Cell Biology (vol. 180, issue 2, pages 254-255) (available online here to UNM faculty, students, and staff).

It doesn’t look like the debate is going away anytime soon. What do you think? Be among those to have the conversation here at the HSC by posting a comment below.

Charity Karcher, MLIS, AHIP
Pharmacy Services Librarian

Citation management programs allow you to create a database of citations you use in your research, much like an electronic filing cabinet.  You can add references manually, or search online databases such as PubMed and download those references into your filing cabinet/database.  When you write a manuscript, you use the citation management software to insert citations, and automatically create a bibliography in the style of your choice, such as APA or for a specific journal, like JAMA.           

There are three citation management programs supported at the HSC, RefWorks, EndNote, and EndNoteWeb. 

Do you use one of the programs listed above? If so, have you found it useful in your work? Have you had any issues or successes with using the program that you would like to share with others? If so, please share your thoughts by using the “Leave a Reply” box below.

If you haven’t used any of these programs, here’s some information to help you decide which program is right for you.  All programs allow manual inputting of records, exporting of data from databases, searching of databases from within the program, and creation of bibliographies either based on a Word document or stand alone reading lists. 

RefWorks

• Available via the Internet
• Easiest of the programs to learn to use
• Handles full journal names and abbreviations well
• Freely available to HSC faculty, staff and students through a subscrtiption paid for by the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center
• Must register from a campus computer, using your GroupWise account

EndNote

• You load software onto your computer
• Software can be purchased from ITS for $116 using a departmental PR or from the bookstore for $185.95 for personal yse
• Need to purchase software upgrades, which can come out frequently
• Hardest of the programs to use
• Allows linking of full text PDFs
• List of full journal titles and abbreviations needs to be imported
• Capable of embedding images or graphs with captions into text

EndNoteWeb

• Available via the Internet
• Freely available to faculty, staff and students through a subscription paid for by the University Libraries
• Newest of the programs, fairly easy to use
• Doesn’t handle journal titles well; use either full or abbreviated, not both
• Can share databases with other EndNoteWeb users
• Must register from a campus computer

Ingrid Hendrix, MILS, AHIP
Nursing Services Librarian

During the past two years the HSLIC Learning Design Center has been experimenting with a learning management system (LMS) known as Moodle.*  Moodle is an open-source software system, hosted by the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center for HSC use.

Most HSC faculty provide instructional content to their students with a learning management system called Web CT Vista^R  which is for curricular use only. Learning Central is another LMS used for non-curricular staff training. Under some  circumstances web-based education needs to be provided to individuals who are not affiliated with the HSC and thus unable to access either Web CT Vista or the Learning Central system. Moodle is the vehicle for delivering those educational experiences.

Because Moodle is not a commercial product, it lacks any vendor training or technical support. No formal organization supports this open-source software, only a loose-knit confederation of institutions that host Moodle on their servers. Users at the HSC are able to find support through the UNM Moodle Designers Group, which meets in the HSLIC at noon on the second Monday of odd-numbered months except July. This informal discussion group, comprised of 10-15 designers from across UNM, allows participants to showcase their Moodle courses and to learn more about Moodle from one another. This group has been meeting since 2006. This year the group will hear presentations on resolving common technical problems in Moodle, small group interactive activities, designing quizzes, and using the journal feature for higher order learning.

Faculty members with the need to provide instructional content to unaffiliated learners might want to more about Moodle. Interested faculty members are encouraged to contact Jon Eldredge, PhD, at jeldredge@salud.unm.edu or 272-0654 to learn more about Moodle or to become involved in this informal group. 

Note to all HSC Faculty:
We in HSLIC are wondering whether you knew that Moodle was available for your use? And now that you know, is it something that you think you might use? Please let us know using the “Leave a Reply” box below. 

*The term Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object Oriented Developmental Learning Environment. 

Jon Eldredge, PhD
Library Knowledge Consultant

Two important population specific reports are now available on HSLIC’s Native Health Database, http://hsc.unm.edu/library/nhd/ .

 2005 Navajo Public Health System Assessment

 The 86 page report has ten sections addressing the ten essential public health services and further divided into sub-sections addressing:  planning and implementation, technical assistance and support, evaluation and quality improvement and resources.  Also covered are community strengths assessment, community health status, forces of change assessment and public health system assessment.  This report was distributed by the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, Window Rock, AZ.

 2005 Navajo Forces of Changes Assessment

This 21 page document outlines the forces impacting Navajo communities and the public health system.  The forces identified were family values, diminishing resources, health behaviors, community initiatives, infrastructure, economic development, technology and emergency preparedness.  This report was distributed by the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, Office of Program Planning and Evaluation, Window Rock, AZ.

Those interested can locate these documents on the Native Health Database by putting the title of the document into the title search box. You can request a pdf of the full documents through the NHD also. Or click here for easy access to the request:
Public Health System Assessment
Forces of Change

 These reports are an example of the new type of document we are proposing to include in the Native Health Database. These documents will include reports, conference proceedings, data sets, and other gray literature. We’re interested in your feedback. Will this type of material enhance the Native Health Database? Do you use the database? If so, what does it help you to do? What would you like to have improved? Please let us know by posting a comment to this blog.

P.S. An additional tip for Pub Med searchers interested in population issues is that “cultural competency” is now a Medical Subject Heading choice.

Patricia V. Bradley, MLS
Native Services Librarian

The Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center now has iClicker equipment installed in several locations and also available for checkout.

The basics: iClicker allows instructors to query class attendees during class, give pop quizzes, stage votes, give class evaluations, etc. A base unit is attached to the instructor station, the instructor has a remote and all students must have their own remotes (purchased in the bookstore). The instructor attaches a flash drive to the base unit to save data from their iClicker sessions.

Installations: We have installed iClicker units in the Domenici Center for Health Sciences Education in the auditorium and the two large classrooms (B116 and 2112). The instructor remotes are available for checkout at the Library Information Desk. iClicker is also installed in the Library computer classroom 226.

Check-out: For use in locations other than the above, we also have a complete “iClicker Instructor Pack” available for checkout. This pack includes a base unit, cable, an instructor remote, and a flash drive (used for downloading data). It can be used in any room with an instructor PC or laptop and a projection system. It can also be used with the Library’s mobile classrooms.

Training sessions for iClicker-using instructors are listed in Learning Central. The first class is scheduled for March 6, 9-11 a.m.

If you’d like to know more about how iClicker can help you with your classes, please contact me at 272-0639. 

And after you’ve used it, please consider adding a comment to this blog post to let your colleagues and the library know how well it went.

Feeds (also called RSS* feeds) may be known to some readers but not to all. A feed is an automatic alert that there is something new on a web page. In the case of the HSLIC blog, you can subscribe to a feed to tell you when there is a new post, and you can subscribe separately to learn about new comments. The difference between a feed and the type of alert you might be more familiar with is that the feed will not come to you as an email message.

Feeds are great because they don’t clog up your email in-box; you control when you access them. When you have a few minutes, you can go to your feed list and browse topics of interest.

To subscribe to the HSLIC feed, go to the HSLIC blog page and look at the right hand margin. Notice the terms that say “Entries RSS” and “Comments RSS;” these are your links to the feeds. Click on the one you prefer and then click the Subscribe to this Feed button; then click Subscribe to this Feed.

When it finds available feeds, the Feeds button, located on your Internet Explorer toolbar , will change from gray to orange and it may play a sound.

To view available feeds on the Internet Explorer toolbar, click the Feeds button. If multiple feeds are available, you’ll see a list of them. Select the one you want to view.

Another option is to create an account on a website such as Google, Bloglines, or blogger.com. If you have such an account, go into the “Subscribe to this Feed” site as described above, copy the URL and paste it into the “Add” form according to directions on your personal blog service.

This process is a little more complex but its advantage is in allowing you to access your feeds from any computer, rather than just one.

Just our curiosity, how many of you out there are already using feeds for websites that interest you?

Janis Teal
Deputy Director, Library Services

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*RSS=Really Simple Syndication. It refers to the technology used to create feeds.

The news I want to be sure you have today is about your option to purchase new Dell workstations at a discounted price. The Faculty Workstation Project was so successful this year that many departments which wanted desktop workstations were unable to secure them. (A few D430 laptops are still available on a first-come basis). HSLIC has been able to arrange with Dell for a great price break on the same model of desktop computer– a Dell Optiplex 755, available for only $25 more than the Faculty Workstation Project cost. This price is only good through January 14.

To order one of the Optiplex 755 desktops, request a copy of the Dell quote by e-mailing helpdesk@salud.unm.edu, attn Rick. You can use this quote in Lobomart to place your order with Dell.

To order one of the remaining laptops, see the details at http://hsc.unm.edu/library/usersupport/FWRP_index.shtml.  

Regardless of which option you choose the help desk will be able to image your computer with the standard image according to details on the User Support website. The new image includes Skype for videoconferencing.

Let us know what features or functions you would like us to add the next time we create an image for the Faculty Workstation Project. You can use the comment feature of the blog to send your feedback.

Best regards to all,

Holly Shipp Buchanan, MLn, MBA, EdD
Associate Vice President for Knowledge Management & Information Technology, HSC;
Director, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center;
Professor, School of Medicine; Deputy CIO, UNM

Greetings–

I am happy to wish you a Happy New Year in this inaugural post on the HSLIC news blog. The HSLIC faculty liaisons will be posting to this blog on various subjects of interest. New posts will appear about every two weeks, and they will be on topics about which we want to engage in dialog with faculty, students, and staff in the Health Sciences Center.  We’ll try out the blog at least until June and see what your response to it is. 

Please give us some feedback by posting your comments so that HSLIC receives your input and can respond to it. (Comments will be monitored and so will not appear instantly.)

Do we need to have this venue for dialog? Please tell us what you think by using the option to post a comment below.

Best regards to all,

Holly Shipp Buchanan, MLn, MBA, EdD
Associate Vice President for Knowledge Management & Information Technology, HSC;
Director, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center;
Professor, School of Medicine; Deputy CIO, UNM