Tag: tips
Beware of predatory “open access” journals! (and other thoughts)
Open Access (OA) is good for science, good for the library, good for authors. The UCB libraries will help pay the author fees if you want to publish your article in an OA journal. However, a world of pseudo-journals, sometimes labeled "predatory journals," awaits your author payment check. These are journals, with nice sounding titles like Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health or American Journal of Social Issues and Humanities, that are often sham titles. Their major purpose is to collect the author fees, and their content lacks quality. Often they list editorial boards consisting of non-existent people or include scholars on an editorial board without their knowledge or permission. Sometimes they use made-up measures (such as "view factor") to feign standing.
The Scholarly Open Access blog maintains a list of individual journal titles that meet their criteria for determining predatory open-access publishers. It is recommended that you not accept an offer to be on their editorial board, nor pay their author fees to publish in one of these titles! In the most concise terms, if you’ve never heard of the journal, best to avoid it.
Much has been written on this, including articles in The New York Times, Nature, and The Scholarly Kitchen blog.
BUT – it’s easy to pick on these predatory journals (fake conferences also exist). It’s also relatively easy to avoid them. Perhaps more important to get upset over is "the $10 BILLION DOLLARS of largely public money that subscription publishers take in every year in return for giving the scientific community access to the 90% of papers that are not published in open access journals – papers that scientists gave to the journals for free! This ongoing insanity not only fleeces huge piles of cash from government and university coffers, it denies the vast majority of the planet’s population access to the latest discoveries of our scientists." This quote is from a response by Michael Eisen to the predatory journals fiasco. I think the argument boils down to, let’s spend our (limited) energy on the more significant problems in scholarly publishing.
ADS celebrates 20 year milestone
The Smithsonian Astophysical Observatory/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is 20 years old this spring. It is operated by SAO under a NASA grant.
In 1993, the ADS Astract Service launched online with 160K of records for 200 users; 20 years later there are 57 million citations for over 10 million users.
Today, the ADS is a digital library portal for astronomical research in three bibliographic databases: Astronomy & Astrophysics, Physics and arXiv e-prints. The ADS provides access to citations, full-text scans, with links to data catalogs and archives. This central discovery engine is used everyday by millions.
Remember to Use the Custom CDPH Link to PubMed to Easily Access Full Text Articles
The custom CDPH link to PubMed allows for one-click access to articles available to you from your desktop. The CDPH PubMed URL provides direct access to Ovid journal articles as well as free online articles. PubMed search results have links indicating that the articles are available full-text: “UCB PHL: CDPH Journals” and “Free Full Text”.
Click the title link of any article in the Free Full Text or CDPH Journals links to see an icon that says “UCB PHL-CDPH Journals”. Click on this icon to view your journal article.
New NSF grant submission rules take effect Jan. 14
The National Science Foundation rules for grant submissions will change for any grant due on or after January 14, 2013. Among the changes:
- Project Summary: On the NSF FastLane proposal submission site, the project summary must now be submitted in three separate text boxes, one for each of the three summary elements: overview, intellectual merit, and broader impacts. Project summaries that require special characters (as in math and physics) may be uploaded as a separate PDF document. The total length of the summary in either format is limited to 4600 characters.
- Biosketch: In the Biographical Sketch, the Publications section has now been renamed Products. Products may include (but are not limited to) datasets, patents, software and copyrights in addition to publications.
For more information about the changes, please see:
What would you miss if you only searched PubMed?
Do you do your own searching for information? Have you considered using
databases other than PubMed for your research? There are a number of
free online literature databases that are worth checking out. Here’s
a sampling:
GreenFILE
Citations on environmental sciences: ecology, environmental health,
environmental planning, environmental chemistry, environmental law,
technology, and related disciplines. Includes some free online full text
items.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Leaching, air pollution – mathematical models, trace analysis …
TOXLINE
Citations from the toxicology and pharmacology literature.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Includes technical reports, Federal Research in Progress,
literature from ILO …
Energy Citations Database
Reports, conference papers, journal articles, books, dissertations, and
patents on energy, materials, environmental science, chemistry, and more.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Non-journal literature, scientific and technical reports …
SafetyLit
Citations relevant to preventing unintentional injuries, violence, and
self-harm.
» What’s not in PubMed?
International literature on all aspects of “accidents”
Regardless of the database(s) that you use, remember that you can request a copy of the materials that you need through our Document Delivery Service. We can find almost anything for you. See how to place a request here.
Interested in building your knowledge and skills in program evaluation?
Check out the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s online module!
This online module has been developed to support practitioners, managers and researchers in the evaluation of health and health research initiatives (including knowledge translation).
A key aim of this module is to develop capacity to conduct evaluation to support evidence-informed action.
The module has five sections:
- Section 1: Evaluation: A Brief Overview
- Section 2: Getting Started (preliminary work)
- Section 3: Designing an Evaluation (developing an evaluation plan)
- Section 4: Special Issues in Evaluation (ethical, conceptual and logistical issues)
- Section 5: Resources (glossary, checklist and evaluation templates)
A number of resources are available in this online module, including:
- Evaluation Checklist: questions to consider when developing and assessing an evaluation plan
- Evaluation Planning Matrix (Appendix A)
- Sample Evaluation Planning Matrix (Appendix B): a completed matrix for reference
For more info, check out: Evaluation module: CIHR resource. Please let me know if you find this tool useful!
New platform for Springer journals and ebooks on Nov. 26
Springer journal and ebook content will be migrating to a new Springer platform effective Monday, November 26. You will automatically be redirected to the new SpringerLink site at that time. The new SpringerLink site is faster, easier to use, and optimized for most mobile devices.
Please note: Individual personalized accounts created on the old SpringerLink platform will not be migrated to the new platform. Users wanting to save searches and alerts will need to create a new account when the new platform is made available. The old platform will remain accessible through the end of 2012, in case you need to retrieve settings from your old account.
Originally posted on CDLINFO News.
Want money? Check out these grants resources!
If you are hunting for funding, take advantage of these resources:
Community of Science (COS) Funding Opportunities (Note: Access limited to UCB faculty, staff, and students.): "A directory of available funds, grants, fellowships, awards and other types of funding throughout the world. Includes sponsors from the public and private sector; local, state and national governments; and societies and corporations." Searches may be limited to the desired country of activity, funding type, and deadline date.
Foundation Center: An independent nonprofit information clearinghouse that provides resources helpful in the grantseeking process, such as the Proposal Writing Short Course, a guide to the process of gathering background information and creating the various components of the proposal (statement of need, budget, etc.)
Grant and Research Information: UCB Public Health Library’s guide to organizations, agencies, publications, and databases with information and resources on grants and research support.
Grants Databases and Information Sources: UCB Bioscience Library’s list of grants databases and ways to acquire funding for research.
Find Grant Information: UCB Library’s guide to print resources useful to help locate financial support for scholarly research.
What would you miss if you only searched PubMed?
Do you do your own searching for information? Have you considered using
databases other than PubMed for your research? There are a number of
free online literature databases that are worth checking out. Here’s
a sampling:
GreenFILE
Citations on environmental sciences: ecology, environmental health,
environmental planning, environmental chemistry, environmental law,
technology, and related disciplines. Includes some free online full text
items.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Leaching, air pollution – mathematical models, trace analysis …
TOXLINE
Citations from the toxicology and pharmacology literature.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Includes technical reports, Federal Research in Progress,
literature from ILO …
Energy Citations Database
Reports, conference papers, journal articles, books, dissertations, and
patents on energy, materials, environmental science, chemistry, and more.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Non-journal literature, scientific and technical reports …
National Criminal Justice Reference Services Abstracts Database
Criminal justice publications, including government reports, books,
journal articles, and unpublished research reports on incarceration,
crime, violence and abuse, alcohol and drugs, infectious diseases, and
more.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Abused and nonabused child comparisons, Occupational health crimes,
Terrorism simulation …
SafetyLit
Citations relevant to preventing unintentional injuries, violence, and
self-harm.
» What’s not in PubMed?
International literature on all aspects of “accidents”
TRID
Books, technical reports, conference proceedings, and journal articles
in the field of transportation research.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Quality of specific environments, Winter maintenance, Fire causes
CORK: A Database of Substance Abuse Information
Journal articles, books, book chapters, and gray literature on
alcoholism and substance abuse of interest to health care professionals
and health educators.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Abuse potential, harmful use, spontaneous remission …
ERIC
Citations from the educational literature including journals, books,
curricula, guides, conferences and meetings, reports, dissertations, and
audiovisual media. Some full-text available.
» What’s not in PubMed?
Role perception, participant satisfaction, behavior standards …
Note: ERIC currently has limited availability of full-text documents
while they check to see if the documents contain personally
identifiable information.
In the meantime, if you do a search and find materials that you want
that are not online at ERIC, you do have other options.
-> If the materials are published by a governmental agency, you can
try searching that agency’s website for them.
-> You can use ERIC’s online form allowing you to request the
return of a particular document, but you’ll need to plan ahead since
it might take 6-10 weeks before they can post it online.
Regardless of the database(s) that you use, remember that you can request a copy of the materials that you need through our Document Delivery Service. We can find almost anything for you. Information on how to place a request is available here.
2013 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Now Available to View
Every year, the National Library of Medicine evaluates its Medical Subject
Headings to see if any changes are needed. MeSH is the National Library of
Medicine’s controlled vocabulary thesaurus. MeSH terms are used to index
the literature that NLM receives from 5,400 journals on medical subjects.
There are 26,853 descriptors in the 2013 MeSH to help you narrow your
research to your topic.
New MeSH terms to be added in 2013 include ageism, air filters, binge
drinking, electronic nose, food quality, hand hygiene, health impact
assessment, homophobia, narrative therapy, organophosphate poisoning,
ozone depletion, public health surveillance, return to work, smoke free
policy, snacks, social marginalization, and tobacco products, among many
others.
The National Library of Medicine has created a guide called Introduction to MeSH-2013 where you can see lists of the changes to MeSH terms for 2013 and to read more about MeSH terms in general.