What Happens to PubMed When a Shutdown Looms?

What Happens to PubMed When a Shutdown Looms?

An easy-to-read summary of Hilda Bastian’s post on PubMed and the US Government Shutdown Every now and then, something happens in the world of health information that makes all of us — librarians, researchers, teachers — sit up straight. Recently, a message on PubMed’s home page did just that. It mentioned the possibility of disruption due to a US government shutdown. And for anyone who depends on PubMed daily, that’s a scary thought! Hilda Bastian, who often writes excellent, evidence-informed posts about science communication, explored this in her blog — “Tracking Shutdown Impact and Changes at PubMed”. I read it…
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How to Peer Review Search Strategies

How to Peer Review Search Strategies

I recently did a short course on "How to Peer Review Search Strategies". This was offered by INSTATS - an organization that offers several excellent research related courses. What is Peer reviewing of search strategies? In India, we have a lacuna of knowledge about search strategies and the need for them to be structured. Most often very little thought is given to the strategy and it is done in an ad-hoc manner. Peer reviewing is something no one even thinks about.. The six hour session over two evenings - run by two expert Information Professionals - Carol Lefebvre - and…
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A little known PubMed search feature

A little known PubMed search feature

At the end of 2022 PubMed launched the "Proximity operator" feature. At the end of 2023, it would not be surprising to find that no one in India (or only a few) is aware of this. Proximity operators - available in most databases that we have to pay for, make searching much more relevant, when we search for terms like "Under developed countries". When we search these with the tags [ti] or [tiab], we are searching for the term as a phrase. When we search them with a proximity operator, then we are searching for the terms being near each…
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