Infodemic – the avalanche! Who can help?

Infodemic – the avalanche! Who can help?

The library's role in countering infodemics Walker P. J Med Libr Assoc. 2021 Jan 1;109(1):133-136 The World Health Organization recently labeled the COVID-19 pandemic as an 'Infodemic'. As the term suggests, an infodemic translates to an aggressive growth in the amount of information available regarding a topic of interest, so much so that a potential solution becomes more and more convoluted. This article divulges the massive growth in COVID data. It reads that, as of the 28th of August 2020, a simple search with the keyword 'COVID-19' provides 47,405 results in PubMed; 1,717 yields on bioRxiv.org; 6368 on medRxiv.org, and…
Read More
About “Medline” and getting a journal selected for Medline indexing

About “Medline” and getting a journal selected for Medline indexing

Medline. PubMed. Two words used often without a person being sure if they are the same, if they are different and if yes, what is the difference. The other confusion being about getting a journal included for selection -  again in PubMed / in Medline... In February 2021, the National Library of Medicine created the Medline website - https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline/index.html - to make information about Medline and PubMed, easy to find. The home page tells us clearly that Medline is a premier bibliographic database of the NLM (National Library of Medicine)  and Medline is the main part of PubMed - which is…
Read More
Sci-hub and ethics

Sci-hub and ethics

Ethics can be ever so confusing! The black and white areas are in writing, or taught to us as we grow, but it is the grey areas that cause an issue. Your child is hungry. You have no money to feed her. You steal food for her. Is that a correct act? Legally, stealing is stealing and is wrong. Ethically we could argue that the intention was to appease a child’s hunger, and the stealing is understandable. You are taking an examination for an important degree after having studied hard. A classmate sitting behind you manages to copy all your…
Read More