Finding What You Need on the Internet:

Transcription

1 Finding What You Need on the Internet: Resources for Bioscientists Celia M. Elliott Department of Physics University of Illinois Copyright 2004 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 1 Goals for this session Goals for this session Learn how to evaluate the quality of resources on the web Learn the types of resources that are available for bioscientists Find free current technical literature Learn how to obtain free software and biology toolkits Learn about free instructional materials and tutorials Discover links to information about funding, conferences, patents, good laboratory practices, and professional associations 2

2 Caveat lector! (Reader beware!) >150,000 websites dedicated to medicaland bioscience-related topics Difficult to separate what is accurate, upto-date, and reliable from what is not Many dubious, even blatantly fraudulent, sites exist on the Web Bad Information Enter at your own risk 3 The web contains a huge amount of information with no quality control; your chances are about equal of finding facts, conjecture, or deliberate misinformation It is up to you to tell the good from the bad The web should not replace standard sources of scientific information books and peer-reviewed journals With caution, the web CAN Supplement traditional library sources Provide the latest information Offer information that is available only online 4

3 Become an informed web user Don't degrade your work by relying on poor quality information Don't risk your reputation (and your chances for funding) by citing inaccurate data, questionable results, or misleading information Think like a detective: Look for clues Ask questions Consider motives Don t trust anybody 5 The Internet Detective Tutorial to improve your information evaluation and web resource skills Takes about 2 hours, but you can go at your own pace or stop and resume later Interactive exercises build your skills and self-tests check what you ve learned On your CD, open the Internet Detective folder and click on the START file To advance to the next slide, click on the tiny Next link at the bottom of the page 6

4 Starting the Internet Detective tutorial On your CD, find the folder InternetDetective and double-click on it 7 Double-click on the START.html icon 8

5 Evaluate web resources critically, based on these three criteria: Accuracy is the information reliable and free from error? Are sources clearly disclosed and verifiable? Authority is it clear who wrote the material? Does the author have the requisite credentials? Is the posting organization unbiased and credible? Should you trust them? Are they trying to influence your opinion? Timeliness is the content up-to-date? Is a publication or last revised date clearly indicated? 9 Some things to check for as you re evaluating web resources Many Web servers use the ~ symbol to represent the personal directories of individuals This page was not created by the Dept of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois; it belongs to a staff member SEs retrieve and present pages out of context see who owns the page Here s a page about what should be done to improve health information technology Should you believe what it says? 10

6 Five broad categories of interest to bioscientists are found on the web Technical literature Peer-reviewed journal articles Government and industry tech reports Abstract databases Protocols Information about organizations Research programs Funding opportunities Conferences and symposia Databases of factual information Free software and analysis tools Educational materials and tutorials 11 The first step for finding peer- reviewed literature is to search one of the full-text archives 100s of journals; all peer-reviewed; all free (some with delay) >100 journals; all peer-reviewed; all free and immediately accessible; also available through PubMed Central 12

7 Use MeSH to identify effective search terms MeSH is a controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles for MEDLINE/PubMed MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to retrieve information that may use different terminology for the same concepts (e.g. renal and kidney ) Online tutorials teach you how to search with the MeSH database 13 Abstract databases are a good place to start, but more work is usually required to get an article PubMed has >14 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950s; links to full articles, but many require subscription or per-article payment Ingenta allows keyword searching of >16 million abstracts from > journals (on all academic subjects); most are pay-per-view; do NOT need to register to search 14

8 15 16

9 Using the information in the abstract, do a Google search 17 18

10 19 20

11 Many government and educational organizations post technical reports; may not be peer-reviewed, reviewed, but still valuable Virtual Technical Report Center Virtual-TechReports.html links to hundreds of organizations DOE/OSTI (all US national laboratories) Full-text DOE reports Biomedical Engineering Research at DOE National Laboratories eprint network biologyandmedicine.shtml 21 The Virtual Technical Report Center has links to an amazing variety of institutions and publications Air Force Radiobiology Research Institute I found many broken links but was able to go back up the paths to the institutions homepages and then navigate to the resource I was looking for cme BioCentrum, Danish Technical Univ. 22

12 Check doctoral dissertations US and Canadian dissertations are keyword searchable at You have to pay for a copy of any dissertation, but you can obtain the author s name and look at the abstract free of charge The Center for Research Libraries has a > manuscript collection of foreign dissertations that are keyword searchable at 23 Search for protocols Search for protocols Protocol Online offers research protocols in a variety of life science fields; contains contributed protocols as well as links to web protocols hosted by research labs worldwide, biotech companies, and personal web sites The Ambros Lab at Dartmouth University offers a comprehensive portal to microbiology protocols 24

13 Use the web to find out about organizations Universities links to the homepages of thousands of universities, worldwide Companies links to the homepages of thousands of US manufacturers or European manufacturers Professional and scholarly societies links to >4000 societies and >3700 websites 25 Funding organizations provide vital information on the web Reports, program guidelines, and RFPs Mission statements What countries the agency supports What kinds of projects are supported What the typical level of funding is Databases of funded projects Potential collaborators Source of current literature Contact information for program officers 26

14 Find out about funding programs for Russian bioscientists Intern. Science and Technology Center (Russian) U.S. CRDF and (Russian) National Institutes of Health (NIH) DHHS Biotechnology Engagement Program INTAS Howard Hughes Medical Institute 27 Use the web to find second-hand laboratory equipment Buyer Beware! Most equipment is sold as is and without warranties Prices probably do not include shipping or customs charges, which will add substantially to the cost of the item Be sure you understand how the item is being sold straight sale or auction? Know who is selling the equipment the original owner? a liquidator? a second-hand dealer? Can you obtain spare parts? Will someone teach you how to use it? 28

15 Some equipment sites to explore has both auctions and regular sales; free wanted advertisements accepted; has useful New User instructions specializes in a broad range of equipment, not just chemistry (e.g. Baxtor blood culture analyzer) specializes in analytical instruments; keyword searchable database; 21 mass specs for sale on July 28 largest US electronic marketplace; maintains some quality control over sellers to protect buyers; sellers from all over the world 29 Find patent and intellectual property (IP) information General patent and (IP) information U.S. patent database Full text database of all U.S. patents issued since Trilateral patent site (US, Japan, EC) Links to other countries patent offices World Intellectual Property Organization (in Russian) 30

16 Find out about conferences and symposia Medical conferences and meetings Professional organizations FASEB conference calendar Database of academic conferences, searchable by subject, country, and date; can see current abstracts or browse the archive of abstracts 31 Find documentation on good laboratory practices (GLP) and standards FDA Good Laboratory Practices _808/default.htm U.S. Pharmacopaeia USP is the worldwide standard for drug information and source of drug standards for more than 3,800 medicines, dietary supplements, and other health care products 32

17 Get free research software, analysis tools, and toolkits Computational biophysics specialized visualization software (VMD: Molecular Graphics, NAMD: Molecular Dynamics, and BioCoRE: Collaborative Environment) Bioinformatics '2can Bioinformatics' website contains simple tutorials on how to use the most common nucleotide/protein bioinformatics search and analysis tools Institut Pasteur provides links to >1900 analysis tools (some broken links) 33 Find resources to help you get your work published Standard Western nomenclature Author instructions for ASM journals Formats for bibliographic citation (Internet) Resources for genetic and cytogenetic nomenclature resources.cfm 34

18 Because so much web content has been created by researchers at US universities, training and instructional materials are widely available 2003 Summer School on Theoretical and Computational Biology 35 For more information and hands-on practice Visit the Internet Bioresearcher This excellent site offers a self-guided tutorial that presents many of the same concepts that have been presented here, but with different examples and a British point of view; quizzes and interactives 36

19 Let s review what we ve learned The types of resources available on the web and how to evaluate them How to obtain free current technical literature How to find specific universities, companies, and other organizations How to find out about funding opportunities, conferences, patents, good laboratory practices, protocols, software and analysis tools, and professional societies Where to obtain free software, analysis tools, and instructional materials 37