NLM: An integral part of the NIH since 1968: A Brief History of its Inception

  If you have used PubMed, and taken a wee bit of trouble to look at the left side of the search box, you may have noticed the PubMed logo followed by the words: US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. The NLM is where the whole PubMed database is compiled.  Let us learn a little more about the NLM and its history. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Library of Medicine is the world’s largest biomedical library with a print and electronic collection used by millions of people around the world. NLM has been around since 1836,…
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Gray literature: An important resource in systematic reviews

Paez A. Gray literature: An important resource in systematic reviews. J Evid Based Med. 2017 Aug; 10(3):233-2 Systematic reviews are publications that provide a state-of-art synthesis of evidence on any given research question. While clinical trials and large studies are analysed to synthesize evidence, you cannot afford to ignore gray literature. The concept of Gray literature is described in this article as “that which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers”. Simply put, gray literature comprises the whole collection of research works that have…
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Country wide access to databases / journals: an urgent need

Country wide access to databases / journals: an urgent need

In 2013, I  had written a blog post - Can you get me this article please?  where I had mentioned about the struggle for getting full text articles, especially if one is not attached to a library that subscribes to several journals. Anyone who keeps up with published literature, carries out research or writes for publication, will obviously read articles. And rightly so. In five years, I believe that some libraries in India would have added more journals to their subscriptions. I am sure many have not added more. Some would have even cut down on their list. Irrespective of…
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