Institutional Subscription Research Articles

State of the Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society: A chronicle of its initiation, growth, and advancement

It was both an opportune time and a stroke of luck that I was offered the opportunity to work under the influence of two limnological titans, namely Drs. Richard Vollenweider and Jack Vallentyne at...

Survey of user preferences from a comparative trial of UpToDate and ClinicalKey

In December of 2011, the A. T. Still Memorial Library at the A. T. Still University of Health Sciences was invited to be a beta test site for ClinicalKey, a major new point-of-care and research platform recently introduced by Elsevier. The advance marketing for ClinicalKey implied its use as a point-of-care-product for physicians. Over the past several years, library staff had been exploring an institutional subscription to UpToDate, so we decided to conduct a side-by-side trial of the two products and to survey participants about their experiences and preferences if the library were able to subscribe to only one of the two. Survey questions were designed to ascertain not only the participants' overall preference, but to provide detailed information to the library staff concerning the basis of this preference, including ease of access and use and the relative value of the two products in the students' didactic and clinical years. ClinicalKey is a new product launched by Elsevier in April 2012. It brings together the content from a number of Elsevier's medically related products, including MD Consult, First Consult, Procedures Consult, over 500 clinical journals, and more than 950 medical electronic books. It is being marketed to physicians as “Faster, more relevant clinical answers, so you can spend less time searching and more time caring for patients,” in an apparent attempt to compete with UpToDate as a point-of-care clinical tool. UpToDate is a point-of-care physician evidence/decision tool developed in 1992. In 2008, it was purchased by Wolters Kluwer, a large global information services and publishing company. It provides detailed, clinically related information written by physicians for physicians to use in clinical settings. It has been heavily marketed directly to physicians and is considered by many physicians as the key evidence-based, point-of-care online tool. There have been numerous studies on the value of UpToDate in clinical settings 1–5. This brief communication adds to this literature by presenting the results of a side-by-side trial of these two products based on reports by undergraduate medical students and their faculty.

Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music (review)

Reviewed by: Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music Susannah Cleveland Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music. [London]: Academic Rights Press, 2012–. http://academiccharts.com/ (Accessed August 2012). [Requires a Web browser and an Internet connection. Pricing: institutional subscription $2250 per year with unlimited simultaneous users; currently, subscriptions available for academic libraries only.] Until the launch of Academic Charts Online: International Popular Music (ACO) in June 2012, any project requiring the ability to extract and compare charting data for sound recording sales was a labor-intensive and often bleak prospect. Of course, Billboard data have long been available to some patrons via local subscriptions of print and microfilm editions and more recently electronically, including via the Billboard site and through Google Books,1 while Cash Box holdings are more limited in libraries but now available online as well.2 The Official Charts Company provides electronic access to a subset of British charting data via their Web site,3 and dedicated scholars have compiled much charting data in books.4 Users hoping to collect, compare, and analyze sales and charts data over time could certainly gather some of that information manually using such sources, but the introduction of ACO facilitates that work for the user, provides tools for analysis, and adds much more data than have traditionally been collectively available in library collections. ACO currently includes chart data from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Spain, Australia, and Mexico from a variety of sources authorized by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.5 Coverage dates and chart types vary by location. For the U.S. and Canada, Billboard data represent all of the included information, with U.S. singles going back to 1956 and U.S. albums to 1985 (with eventual album backfill to 1955), and Canada going back to 1996. U.K. data come from Official Charts, beginning in 1952. Media Control provides German and Spanish data going back to 1977 and 2003, respectively. Australian data come from ARIA (back to 1988), and [End Page 599] Mexican data from Nielsen Music Airplay (back to 1999). In each of these areas, coverage generally differs for singles charts, album charts, genre charts, and so on. New data arrive weekly, although one provider has a short embargo before the data appears in ACO with an average of only about a week’s lag time for the majority of the content. These data are presented as a searchable database with tools to create analytics that allow the user to compare charting positions by artist, title (singles and albums), countries in which titles charted, label, and more. ACO personnel come from backgrounds in electronic publishing and databases, with additional experience in the music industry, so they approach this project with expertise and enthusiasm; for example, they started Classical Music Library as one of the pioneers of streaming music for libraries. An advisory board made up of librarians and academics helps guide the development of the product and supplements this expertise. Functionality ACO’s approach to controlled vocabulary mirrors the predictive search mechanism in Google and, as such, will seem familiar to many users. When one begins a search, potential results display just below the search box; the user selects the desired search term from the controlled list to populate the search box. If no suggestions appear once a complete name or title is entered, there are no data for that search term. The predictive results will include a combination of possible result types. For instance, a search beginning with “Elliott” will suggest Missy Elliott, Carol Elliott, Elliott Smith, William Elliott Whitmore, and others as artist searches, as well as albums and singles by each of these artists. Adding “Smith” to the search narrows possible searches including an artist search (“Elliott Smith”), four album searches (with manufacturer name and number for each), and five single searches (with label name). Suggestions appear only for complete words (in the above example, for instance, if one pauses after typing “Ellio,” the suggestion box will indicate that there are “no matches”). A title search will yield results linked specifically to an artist. For instance, searching, “L.O.V.E.” offers suggestions of “L.O.V.E.” by Ashlee...

LibraryMusicSource.com (review)

Reviewed by: LibraryMusicSource.com Scott Stone LibraryMusicSource.com. [Verona, NJ]: CD Sheet Music, LLC, 2000–. www.librarymusicsource.com (Accessed July–August 2012). [Requires a Web browser, Adobe Reader, and an Internet connection. Pricing: institutional subscription starts at $500 per year for unlimited users and downloads; individual subscription for $19.95 for 40 downloads with no time limit.] Many music libraries went through a brief period of collection development during which librarians purchased compact discs containing hundreds of pages of scanned sheet music. Instead of purchasing a single printed score, a library could pay about the same amount of money for dozens of titles on one easy-to-use disc—what a great deal! Perhaps the largest of these compact disc publishers, CD Sheet Music, took the next digital step forward by offering institutions and individuals a subscription option to their entire collection. This subscription product is Library Music Source. Library Music Source (LMS) is a subscription sheet music database that offers the entire collection of CD Sheet Music and the Orchestra Musician’s CD-ROM Library. This collection amounts to more than 300,000 pages of music comprising approximately 35,000 works. The collection provides public domain sheet music for almost all instruments commonly studied in American music schools, but primarily focuses on solo piano, piano duets, solo violin, violin and piano, voice and piano, opera vocal scores, choral vocal scores, full orchestral scores, and individual instrumental parts to major orchestral works. The search box, found on every page of the site, only allows for simple keyword searches. This could sometimes be frustrating as I would occasionally retrieve far more results than I was expecting; fortunately, LMS makes up for their simple search capabilities by providing rather good browsing options. One may begin browsing by either composer’s surname or by instrument family, both of which quickly branch out into multiple options. For example, I was able to very quickly locate the [End Page 602] Concerto in D Minor, op.47 for violin by Jean Sibelius with a quick browse; unfortunately, the resulting music was not what I expected as it provided me with the piano reduction score even though the Browsing category was clearly labeled “Solo Violin with Orchestra.” While the score was not exactly what I wanted, I downloaded the PDF file with a single click and was rewarded with a very clean scan of some score. I describe it as “some,” because LMS does not provide any information as to who published the original score, which I would certainly like to know so that I could easily compare editions if I were preparing for a performance. This issue became even more problematic to me when I noticed scores that contain fingerings without any information as to who originally provided the fingerings. The CD Sheet Music Web site states that scores come from publishers such as Durand, Schirmer, Peters, Breitkopf & Härtel, and others, but they “do not identify the edition of each work” because the “collections include so many individual works from a variety of different published editions.”1 Next, I decided to look at the vocal selections, because I work with many voice students. LMS certainly has many of the standard literature by Brahms, Schubert, and Fauré that students frequently perform; however, I was unable to find both high and low voicings for all the songs I searched for. Additionally, songs were not all arranged in a standard manner for each composer. For example, all of Schubert’s songs appear to be available individually by each individual song title (and therefore downloadable as a single file), but most of Fauré’s songs are grouped by opus (and therefore one must download a large group of songs at once). Somewhat frustrated by the vocal music, I next looked at the orchestral parts. As someone who spent many hours practicing (and sometimes almost as many searching for) excerpts, I was happy to see so many standard excerpts in one place. Most of the excerpt books I’ve ever used generally provide only one or two small parts of the whole piece, but these excerpts provide an instrument’s entire part for a work so one could truly study...

The tragedy of lost libraries

AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Thank you for publishing the recent editorial by Mitchell et al. 1 regarding the closure of addiction libraries. The essay documents an alarming trend and offers three sensible suggestions for what needs to be done to preserve the libraries and librarians that are essential for quality scholarship in the field. While much of the material once available only in addiction libraries is now available on-line, much of it is not. Moreover, even the journals that are on-line remain inaccessible to researchers who are not affiliated with a university and thus do not have institutional subscriptions. Having to pay $30 for a 10-page journal article (to an increasingly corporatized publishing industry, never to authors) puts many at a functional disadvantage. This introduces an inequality that is anathema to solid science. As they say in Silicon Valley, information and ideas want to be free. Perhaps more troubling than such exclusionary costs is the potential loss of historical documents. Like all other realms of scholarship, addiction research is subject to fads, fashions, paradigm shifts and to the politics in which public policy decisions are so often embedded. Vital documents showing the basis of government decisions regarding alcohol, tobacco and other drugs are likely to end up in a dumpster, preventing future researchers from understanding why things are the way they are. As Orwell reminded us in his prescient novel, 1984, those who control the past can control the future. Without addiction libraries and librarians who know the most about what they contain, our field is at risk of de facto censorship. Declarations of interest None. Reference 1 Mitchell A. L., Lacroix S., Weiner B. S., Imholtz C., Goodair C. Collective amnesia: reversing the global epidemic of addiction library closures. Addiction 2012; 107: 1367– 1368. Volume108, Issue2February 2013Pages 437-438 ReferencesRelatedInformation

BMJ Case Reports

BMJ Case Reports is a journal that provides a collection of peer-reviewed case reports in all disciplines for health care professionals and researchers. This title is available only in electronic format from BMJ Group. Cases come from 70 countries, and the journal consists of more than 3,800 articles that cover both common and rare diseases. Content is updated frequently, often more than once each week. Tabs are available in the middle of the home page for quick navigation to case reports. Tabs are organized into the categories of recent cases, the previous month's most read articles, specialties, and top-rated cases. There is no ranking of the previous month's most read articles, but a list of nineteen was included on the date viewed. Specialty topics include both clinical and nonclinical classifications, such as endocrinology and ethics. It is unclear how top-rated cases are selected, and the tab includes titles without publication dates. Services for individual articles include email; alerts for when articles are cited, are corrected, or have e-letters published; similar articles in the journal; and addition of an article to a folder or portfolio. BMJ Case Reports has embraced popular networking functions. Users can utilize social bookmarking tools, including Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, CiteULike, and Mendeley. Users are also able to rate articles by either liking or disliking them and have the option of commenting on the reason for their choices. While several articles were rated, it did not appear that many had comments. BMJ Case Reports also has a blog, which further highlights case reports from Editor's Choice selections. Editor's Choice articles are free without registration, as are article summaries. Another “Spotlight” on BMJ Case Reports draws attention to a particular specialty and links directly to the cases in that collection. The journal allows users to browse articles that most interest users by providing links by specialty and by article type. The specialty topics are the same as those mentioned in the discussion regarding tabs. The types of cases are subdivided into Full Cases and Other. Article types are varied and include options such as “Learning from errors,” “Myth exploded,” “New disease,” and “Unexpected outcome,” among others. Content also includes videos and images. Cases featuring video reports are listed together; however, the current list of 65 results could not be sorted and the advanced search menu did not have a search feature for video reports. Instead, the display showed 10 results at a time, presumably in date order. The “Images in…” feature lists journal content that contains images. For the 836 results in this collection, users can modify the list's citation format (standard or condensed), change the number of results per page, and sort the order according to relevance, most recent, or earliest first. The advanced search menu does include images as a way to limit searches. Individual and institutional subscriptions are available, and subscribers are called “fellows.” Fellowships allow users to use all published materials, whether for teaching or personal use, without the need to ask for additional permissions. Fellows may also submit as many cases as they would like with their subscriptions. Users with access to institutional fellowships are not required to pay individual fees. Fellows may also submit unlimited cases for publication. Compared to similar resources, BMJ Case Reports is a somewhat unique product. For example, although the National Library of Medicine catalog of journals referenced in the National Center for Biotechnology Information databases lists numerous titles devoted to both open access and privately published case reports, these titles are dedicated only to specific disciplines. Two other titles, The American Journal of Case Reports (formerly, Case Reports and Clinical Practice Review) and Journal of Medicine Cases, are open access titles that have a similar scope as BMJ Case Reports; however, they do not share the features discussed that are unique to BMJ Case Reports, nor do their sites share the ease of navigation as seen in the BMJ product. Several items on the BMJ Case Reports site may be redundant. However, the resources available through BMJ Case Reports are easy to find and are presented logically.

ESA and Scientific Publishing—Past, Present, and Pathways to the Future

The leadership of the Society recognizes the potential of new trends toward open access (OA) publishing and the value of having the papers published in ESA journals freely accessible to the widest possible audience. However, because fully OA journals do not charge for subscriptions, applying such a model to the ESA journals would require major changes in the financial basis and the operations both of the ESA journals and of the Society’s activities more broadly. For most of our history, library subscriptions have paid for copyediting, typesetting, archiving, distribution, and other publication services, allowing us to keep charges to authors at a relatively low level. Subscription fees have also partially defrayed the costs of outreach, education, and scientific meetings, providing stable core funding to complement membership fees, the annual meeting, donations, and grants.

Websites of note

Websites of note

EBSCOhost Mobile App for iPhone. Version 3.0

The EBSCOhost Mobile App for iPhone is included with an institutional subscription and provides users with the ability to search the EBSCOhost databases that their institutions subscribe to via the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. This application (app) must be downloaded from the iTunes Store, and the person downloading it must have registered for access through an institutional subscription. As of April 30, 2012, there is a link at the bottom of each EBSCOhost database page where users can register their email addresses to download the app. Users should pick an email account that can be accessed on the mobile device where they plan to download the app, and the link that they are emailed for authenticating is only good for twenty-four hours. After that time, users must register through EBSCOhost again [1].

HIV Surveillance: The conscience of the epidemic.

[1]. The report of five homosexual men with a rare pneumonia was presented as a case series, but, in retrospect, established a working surveillance case definition for a new disease. Dr. James Curran, the scientist who led the CDC team for that MMWR report, later oversaw the US HIV surveillance system for many years and has famously called HIV surveillance “the conscience of the epidemic”. Dr. Curran’s statement (like all good truisms), works on many levels. In its simple context, HIV surveillance data on counts of cases have been objective measures of our challenges and our successes in responding to the epidemics in many countries throughout the world. Surveillance data, objectively presented and interpreted, should be used as guideposts for determining how prevention resources can be best allocated, and for planning what resources will be required for those living with HIV. On another level, our current understanding of surveillance data describing the extent of late diagnoses and health disparities by gender, poverty, and race in HIV epidemics speak to the obligations of our communities to address issues of prompt access to HIV testing, treatment and care, and attention to the socio-economic factors that are critical drivers of many HIV epidemics. Through the decades, HIV surveillance systems have informed our increasingly detailed understanding of the disease in populations, and advances in understanding of the transmission dynamics of the infection and its management have driven refinements in the surveillance systems [2]. As public health activity evolves--to embrace new technologies, to address new challenges (e.g., resistant HIV), to investigate new approaches to old challenges (e.g., health disparities), to expand into new ways of discharging essential functions (i.e., assuring linkage and retention and the quality of HIV care) – the surveillance foundation supporting it has to evo-lve as well. Surveillance approaches have arisen that are suited to the epidemiologic conditions, public health infra-structures, and resources available in diverse regions of the world. In some countries, especially those with generalized

Undergraduate medical students’ perceptions, attitudes, and competencies in evidence-based medicine (EBM), and their understanding of EBM reality in Syria

BackgroundTeaching evidence-based medicine (EBM) should be evaluated and guided by evidence of its own effectiveness. However, no data are available on adoption of EBM by Syrian undergraduate, postgraduate, or practicing physicians. In fact, the teaching of EBM in Syria is not yet a part of undergraduate medical curricula. The authors evaluated education of evidence-based medicine through a two-day intensive training course.MethodsThe authors evaluated education of evidence-based medicine through a two-day intensive training course that took place in 2011. The course included didactic lectures as well as interactive hands-on workshops on all topics of EBM. A comprehensive questionnaire, that included the Berlin questionnaire, was used to inspect medical students’ awareness of, attitudes toward, and competencies’ in EBM.ResultsAccording to students, problems facing proper EBM practice in Syria were the absence of the following: an EBM teaching module in medical school curriculum (94%), role models among professors and instructors (92%), a librarian (70%), institutional subscription to medical journals (94%), and sufficient IT hardware (58%). After the course, there was a statistically significant increase in medical students' perceived ability to go through steps of EBM, namely: formulating PICO questions (56.9%), searching for evidence (39.8%), appraising the evidence (27.3%), understanding statistics (48%), and applying evidence at point of care (34.1%). However, mean increase in Berlin scores after the course was 2.68, a non-statistically significant increase of 17.86%.ConclusionThe road to a better EBM reality in Syria starts with teaching EBM in medical school and developing the proper environment to facilitate transforming current medical education and practice to an evidence-based standard in Syria.

How to write a paper for Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry

How to write a paper for <i>Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry</i>

Increasing Access to Your Research Published in AMBIO

AMBIO has a unique position in the world of environmental science journals in that it is clearly aimed at linking the output of the scientific community with the wider public, and thereby influencing policy formulation. It is therefore of paramount importance that environmental research published in our journal can be easily accessed by a diverse readership around the world. AMBIO articles must be read, disseminated, and discussed so that important scientific results can be put into practice. A record number of almost 100 000 full-text articles were downloaded in 2011 but we must strive for even higher access. One way to move forward is to make articles permanently and openly available on the Internet from the first day of publication. Open access subsidized by authors or research funds is increasingly becoming of greater importance to research institutions, to the general public, to researchers without institutional subscriptions, and not least to science itself. But it is also in the interest of authors themselves: the heightened visibility of their work to a larger audience leads to higher impact through more citations of their articles. As Editor-in-Chief, I have regularly made especially noteworthy articles available with no charge paid by authors. Download rates dramatically increased as soon as these articles were made free access. Furthermore, the five most popular articles in terms of number of downloads in the preceding 90days have also been made free access (courtesy of Springer). We will soon introduce a further option where you, as author, will have the choice whether you want to publish open access or not. Starting from June 1, 2012, AMBIO will shift from a traditional journal to a hybrid journal. In other words, should you so choose, you can make your article freely available indefinitely upon publication, in exchange for payment of a publication fee. If you publish an article in the traditional way, without open access, all AMBIO articles are automatically made open access after 12 months from the day of publication via PubMed Central (starting January 1, 2010 but currently we are experiencing a backlog). You may also deposit your work on a personal or institutional online archive immediately after the article has been published on SpringerLink. However, you may not use the publisher’s PDF version, and a link must be inserted to the published article on Springer’s website.

A-R Editions’ Online Music Anthology (review)

A-R Editions' Online Music Anthology. [Middleton, WI]: A-R Editions, Inc., 2010-. www.armusicanthology.com (Accessed October-November 2011). [Requires a Web browser, Adobe Flash Player, and an Internet connection. Pricing: institutional subscription for $1000 per year with unlimited simultaneous users; individual subscription for $50 per 6-month period.] A-R Editions' Online Music Anthology is a Web-based compilation of scores edited and presented for the express purpose of providing source texts for courses in music history. (13) It is, by no means, a substitute for purchases of individual scores in the music library, but rather a substitute for anthology purchases and a supplement to monument collections. The database currently contains 425 vocal and instrumental works--over 3,000 pages--including titles from the print versions of A-R's Recent Researches series and some American Institute of Musicology series, as well as additional titles in similar veins. (14) With a recent move to institutional subscriptions, A-R has geared this resource toward a wider audience and given libraries an opportunity to combat problems of textbook affordability and inflexibility for music students. The Anthology currently contains selected pieces of music from antiquity through the romantic era, with the greatest emphasis on the common practice period. Plans are afoot to acid almost 250 additional [18.sup.th] - and [19.sup.th]-century works in the near future, and A-R has begun discussing the inclusion of [20.sup.th]-century titles as well. Pieces are selected with an eye toward replacing print anthologies traditionally used for music survey courses. Feedback from musicologists indicates that this is a practical strategy thus far; a 2010 review of the Anthology in the Journal of Music History Pedagogy presents Dane Heuchemer's cogent assessment of the benefits and limitations of using the Anthology in teaching music history, and includes a positive assessment of the correlation between the scores currently used in the review author's survey on medieval and Renaissance music and the contents of the Anthology. (15) The collection has grown since this assessment, so one would expect even higher correlation today. Each piece in the collection is presented as new editions with modern clefs while editorial changes such as transpositions are noted. Many of these pieces have previously appeared in print versions of A-R series, and while information about the series is on the bottom of each score's first page (when relevant), this information is not available when browsing the database, nor is this searchable information. To music librarians and musicologists, the A-R brand is a familiar and trusted one that has depended on known scholars to serve as editors. Others visiting the site might not find the publisher as familiar, but they can see who edited each piece on the first page of the score. As with the series title, this information could be more helpful if it were included in the metadata about each piece and searchable. Compositions included in the Anthology represent a wide variety of genres that are indexed with impressive granularity. Some works are presented in their entirety while many larger works are represented only by selections. For instance, one may find all of Brahms's Fourth Symphony (as four separate files, one for each movement) but only the first and second movements of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Likewise, there are lew complete operas included; rather, most operas here are represented by selections that range front arias and scenes to full acts. Smaller works are more likely to be included in their entirety. and excerpts are chosen with care. The comprehensiveness--or lack thereof--of the database's coverage is a reflection of the purpose of this source, and it is an important distinction that should he emphasized when marketing the Anthology to patrons. As with A-R's print series, coverage is not exhaustive by composer or genre but rather representative. …

Does your institution subscribe to Obstetric Medicine?

This year will see the fourth anniversary of the launch of the journal Obstetric Medicine. Many thanks to all those who completed the reader’s survey. This has reassured us that most of you find the journal useful and believe that it fills what was previously a gap. We will be using the results of this survey to appeal the decision not to include Obstetric Medicine in MEDLINE. We know that all of you will feel more comfortable writing, reviewing and commissioning copy for the journal once it is listed in MEDLINE. However, the long-term success of the journal also depends on securing enough institutional subscriptions to ensure financial viability. All members of ISOM, MOMS, NASOM and SOMANZ receive the journal at a substantially subsidized cost and we do not wish to change this. We feel it is and should remain an important benefit of membership of these societies. However, we would really appreciate your help in approaching your own institution’s library. Please consider completing a library recommendation form at http://www. rsmpress.com/librarians/recommend.php. Subscription information can also be found at www.obmed.rsmjournals.com. Obstetric Medicine, along with other RSM journals, is available online on the newly released RSM H2O platform hosted by the world’s leading electronic content provider, HighWire, which offers instant access to full text, where available, with links to references and cited articles. Your Librarian would benefit from:

Reading Newspapers: Cultural Histories of the Popular Press in Modern Britain

AbstractPopular newspapers have not, in general, featured prominently in histories of modern Britain. In recent years, however, a number of scholars, many inspired by the ‘cultural turn’ and the increased scholarly focus on language, meaning and identity, have reassessed the value of the popular press as a historical source. Newspapers provide one of the most effective ways of exploring the representations and narratives that circulated throughout British society. The ‘spectacular heterogeneity’ of their contents, moreover, ensures that newspapers are a potentially rich source of information on a wide range of subjects. This growing interest in the popular press as a historical source has been dramatically reinforced in the last decade by the digitisation of a vast number of newspapers and periodicals from the seventeenth to the 21st centuries. Millions of pages of content, rapidly searchable by keyword, are now available, at least for those fortunate enough to have individual or institutional subscriptions. The revolution in the accessibility and usability of newspaper archives has transformed scholars’ enthusiasm for them. This article assesses how these developments have affected the writing of modern British history, and suggests likely future directions for the field.

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship

Building a Regional HIV/AIDS Database: Challenges Faced by West African Specialist Physicians and Health Librarians

The article investigates access and the use of the Internet among specialty doctors in five West African countries. It also looks at what information and communication technologies (ICT) are needed by health librarians to build a human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) database to carry out the West African regional project on HIV/AIDS information management. Two sets of questionnaires were designed: one for specialty doctors to assess their skills and the functionality of their institutional Internet access, the other to determine health librarians' ICT skills. The findings reveal factors such as power outages, irregular and slow Internet connection, nonexistent institutional Internet subscription, or half-day Internet access that resulted in minimal use of Internet by the specialty doctors. The health librarians, though skilled with information management, needed additional ICT training in Web design, electronic classification of resources, and most importantly, database building to function optimally on their project assignment. The findings led to recommendations such as improving Internet access in the West African tertiary institutions/hospitals and continuous ICT training for the health librarians.

EJN in the digital age: introducing the ‘EJN blog’

EJN in the digital age: introducing the ‘EJN blog’

Access to Scientific Publications: The Scientist's Perspective

BackgroundScientific publishing is undergoing significant changes due to the growth of online publications, increases in the number of open access journals, and policies of funders and universities requiring authors to ensure that their publications become publicly accessible. Most studies of the impact of these changes have focused on the growth of articles available through open access or the number of open-access journals. Here, we investigated access to publications at a number of institutes and universities around the world, focusing on publications in HIV vaccine research – an area of biomedical research with special importance to the developing world.Methods and FindingsWe selected research papers in HIV vaccine research field, creating: 1) a first set of 50 most recently published papers with keywords “HIV vaccine” and 2) a second set of 200 articles randomly selected from those cited in the first set. Access to the majority (80%) of the recently published articles required subscription, while cited literature was much more accessible (67% freely available online). Subscriptions at a number of institutions around the world were assessed for providing access to subscription-only articles from the two sets. The access levels varied widely, ranging among institutions from 20% to 90%. Through the WHO-supported HINARI program, institutes in low-income countries had access comparable to that of institutes in the North. Finally, we examined the response rates for reprint requests sent to corresponding authors, a method commonly used before internet access became widespread. Contacting corresponding authors with requests for electronic copies of articles by email resulted in a 55-60% success rate, although in some cases it took up to 1.5 months to get a response.ConclusionsWhile research articles are increasingly available on the internet in open access format, institutional subscriptions continue to play an important role. However, subscriptions do not provide access to the full range of HIV vaccine research literature. Access to papers through subscriptions is complemented by a variety of other means, including emailing corresponding authors, joint affiliations, use of someone else's login information and posting requests on message boards. This complex picture makes it difficult to assess the real ability of scientists to access literature, but the observed differences in access levels between institutions suggest an unlevel playing field, in which some researchers have to spend more efforts than others to obtain the same information.