JANUARY 2004
Copernic Search Agent
This time I would like
to introduce to you all a search-agent software that can be downloaded from
the net free of cost. All of us know what a search engine is; a search agent
is a tool that uses various search engines to search for our query, deletes
the repetitions, and arranges the search results in the order of relevance.
Copernic Agent is a search agent that I have been using for past few months,
and I have found it very useful (it searches in 17 search engines!). The
basic version of the software can be downloaded free of cost from
www.copernic.com . If you are using one of those slow land-line
connections, the download may take a while - but for those who use the
search engines frequently, the benefits are going to be worth the effort
FEBRUARY 2004
The List of Journals
Indexed in Index Medicus
There are umpteen
reference systems, the more commonly used ones being the Harvard system and
the Vancouver system. One major difference between the two systems is in
their specifications on how journal titles are to be cited. While the
Harvard system specifies that the full title of a journal should be cited,
the Vancouver system requires an abbreviation of the title according to the
style used in Medline. This difference creates some practical difficulties
to authors, especially to students doing their theses and dissertations.
Using Harvard system requires that one has to find out the full title of
journals cited in sources that use Vancouver system, and while using the
Vancouver system, one has to find out the abbreviations for some of the
titles. This is not a difficult task if the journal is a well known one, and
an educated guess suffices for some other titles. However, guesswork could
lead to erroneous conclusions
(Psychol Rev is not
Psychology Reviews, it is Psychological Review) or may be
difficult. (Guess the abbreviation for Clinical EEG
(electroencephalography))
The List of Journals
Indexed in Index Medicus published by National Library of Medicine lists
the full titles and abbreviations of all the 3,923 journals indexed in Index
Medicus as of March 2003. This is a 301 page PDF document that can be
downloaded from the Library's website free of cost. You can download the
entire document by clicking
here. And use the document not only to write the references, but also to
choose an indexed journal to send your article.
MARCH 2004
PowerPoint Tips
Click
here to view the tips
APRIL 2004
Project Gutenberg
The Project produces electronic versions of
books in the public domain, and their website lists thousands of books that can be downloaded from the site for free. Most of the books listed
are classics, and the authors include Shakespeare, Darwin, Tagore, and
Dostoyevsky. The site’s address is
http://www.gutenberg.net/ . You may first download the zipped file
containing the complete list (122 pages in Word!!) of available free books.
MAY 2004
Searching PubMed for Free
Full-text Articles
During a PubMed search, we can selectively
retrieve free full-text articles on any topic using either of the
following steps:
Adding 'AND free full text[sb]' with the search query in double quotes (E.g.:
"pathophysiology" AND "obsessive compulsive disorder" AND free full text[sb])
Giving 'AND "loattrfree full text" [Filter]' with the search query in double
quotes. E.g.: "pathophysiology" AND "obsessive compulsive disorder" AND "loattrfree
full text" [Filter]
JUNE 2004
URL of a Saved Web Page
Most of the reference systems require that one has to include the URL (web
address) of a
web page while citing an online article. The URL of a page saved in a computer
can be found with the following steps:
-
Open the web page
-
Right click with the cursor over
the page
-
Select 'View Source'
-
A Notepad page opens, and the the
beginning of the page mentions the URL from which the web page was saved.
JULY 2004
Finding Lost Web Pages
You find a reference to an online article, and feel that the article might be
useful. You try to visit the page by typing the cited address in your browser's address bar,
and it returns an error message that the page cannot be displayed. This
frequently happens, due to the rapidly changing nature of the Web. Sites and
pages get removed from the Web or are moved to different addresses. Here are some ways to find these lost pages:
-
To find a lost page that is not very old, look in the Google cache.
Go to Google. Type the complete address into the search box. From the results page, select the option to
show the cached copy, and Google shows you a copy of the page that it cached
sometime in the past.
-
Another way is to use the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine.
This site claims to have an archive of 30 billion web pages "from 1996 to a
few months ago".
AUGUST 2004
Google Web Alerts
Psychiatry is one of the fastest
growing specialties in Medicine, and we are continually trying to stay updated
on our areas of interest. Recently, the search-engine giant Google introduced
the Google Web Alerts, which is going to be of considerable help to all of us in
discovering new web pages on our topics of interest. Just go to the Web Alerts
home page, enter the key words for your area of interest, select how frequently
you have to be informed about the new sites on the topic, and enter the e-mail
address to which the information is to be sent. When Google indexes a new page
that contains the key words you selected, you will receive an e- mail that
contain a link to the page.
Considering the high number of web
pages for consumers, it may be better if you select a highly specific key word
rather than a general one. For e.g., it may be better to use "neuropsychological
deficits in schizophrenia" than "schizophrenia". Also, the
advanced search page
on Google may be used to fine tune a search. You can incorporate the
techniques in the Google advanced search in your Google Web Alert settings by
selecting the conditions you want on the Google advanced search page, and then
clicking the "Google Search" button. When the results page appears, copy the
text that appears in the search box on that page and paste it into the box on
the Google Web Alerts home page labeled "Web search."
One drawback of the Alerts is that
Google looks only at the top 20 search results, and you may not get Alerts
on a relevant article in a site that have a lower PageRank.
You may visit the Web Alerts home
page here.
SEPTEMBER 2004
Vivisimo ClusterMed
PubMed returns search results
in a long chronological list with no further organization, which makes it
hard for users to gain maximum benefit from this invaluable resource.
Vivisimo's ClusterMed is a tool designed to organize PubMed search results
into categories for easier review of results. ClusterMed sends the user's
query unchanged to PubMed and then clusters the returned articles into
hierarchical folders based on subject categories. By organizing results into
categories, users discover the main themes relating to the subject of the
query and can easily reach relevant articles buried deep in the
chronological list. For instance, a search for “genetics of autism” using
the limited function ClusterMed demonstration on Vivisimo’s Web site
produced about 25 clusterings with categories such as corpus callosum,
fragile X syndrome, and mutations, protein. For some categories, a
second-tier clustering is produced. For instance, the "mutations, protein"
folder sorted articles into seven sub-topic areas, including mental
retardation, binding proteins, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Users can
cluster results by: title, abstract, MeSH terms; title and abstract; MeSH
terms only; author; affiliation; and date published. Vivisimo says sorting
articles by author or affiliation can be used to help identify experts or
the leading institutions conducting work in a particular area of research.
A demonstration version of
ClusterMed can be found
here.
Unregistered users of the demo can get up to 100 articles returned per
search; registered users get a 30-day trial that supports up to 500 results
per query.
|