Keep Current with Health Science Literature Create a Subject or Journal Alerts with My NCBI

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1 Neil John Maclean Health Sciences Library 727 McDermot Avenue (Brodie Centre) Winnipeg, MB umanitoba.ca/libraries/health Keep Current with Health Science Literature Create a Subject or Journal Alerts with My NCBI Trying to keep up with the health science literature? A feature of PubMed, called My NCBI, will save you time by doing your searching for you. My NCBI allows you to automate your searching by storing search strategies. You can then receive regular alerts for either subjects or journal titles of your choice. With the linking software of the UM Libraries, in many cases you will be able to access the fulltext of new articles. If journal articles are not available online, you will be able to easily make a document delivery request. Register for a My NCBI Account To create an account on My NCBI, click Register in the My NCBI box at the top right of the PubMed screen. After you register a confirmation will be sent to your address to activate automatic updates. Follow the instructions to confirm your new account.) Link Your My NCBI Account to UM Libraries Electronic Journal Holdings Login to you My NCBI Account. From the blue side bar, select Outside Tool. This feature allows you to link directly to full text articles when your updates arrive. Click on U from the alphabetical display and then select U. Manitoba Health Sciences Libraries UM Links.

2 Creating Subject or Journal Alterts with My NCBI (TG-Nov. 23, 2006) 2 Creating Journal Title Alerts Using My NCBI you can receive alerts of new journal articles that appear in your favourite health sciences journals (provided the title is indexed by the PubMed database). From the blue side bar, choose the Journals Database. Tip on Journals to choose: A recent article 1 found that by regularly reading the following eight titles, health professionals could keep up with the most clinically relevant articles: Annals of Internal Medicine Archives of Internal Medicine BMJ CMAJ Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews JAMA Lancet New England Journal of Medicine. The following 10 journals would provide additional specialty information: American Journal of Medicine, Archives of General Psychiatry, British Journal of General Practice, British Journal of Surgery, Health Psychology, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, Journal of Family Practice, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and Pediatrics The most important articles for general/family practice were published in BMJ, Lancet, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Archives of Disease in Childhood, and Annals of Internal Medicine The most important journals for nursing were: Qualitative Health Research, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Pediatrics, JAMA, Lancet, BMJ, and Journal of Advanced Nursing If you know the journal title for which you would like to set up an alert, enter the title into the search box. If you would like to browse the available journal titles by subject, click on the subject terms link. 1 What do evidence-based secondary journals tell us about the publication of clinically important articles in primary healthcare journals? Kathleen Ann McKibbon, Nancy L Wilczynski and Robert Brian Haynes BMC Medicine 2004, 2:33

3 Creating Subject or Journal Alterts with My NCBI (TG-Nov. 23, 2006) 3 Select the journal title by clicking in the checkbox next to the title and clicking on Links to the far right of the title. Click on PubMed in the Links flyout box. The search on your titles (e.g. Lancet) will be returned to the Pubmed window. Click on Save Search next to the search box If you are not already logged into your My NCBI account, you will be prompted to enter your login and password. Once you have logged in, you will be prompted to set up the alert for the title.

4 Creating Subject or Journal Alterts with My NCBI (TG-Nov. 23, 2006) 4 Choose a name for the search that is meaningful. In general, for journal titles, the default will be the accepted abbreviation for that title. Change the maximum number of items to 50 (or less if that is what you prefer). Move the radio button to Yes so that you receive an alert of new updates Choose the frequency with which you would like to receive results Change the format to Abstract or AbstractPlus so that you will receive the abstract plus the UM Links information for each article. If you want to receive results even if there are no new results place click on the checkbox next to Yes. If there is any additional information you want to make not of, add this into the Additional Text box. For example, you might wish to remind yourself to forward the results to a group of people. Click on OK and your search for this journal title is now established. To set up another journal title, repeat this process.

5 Creating Subject or Journal Alterts with My NCBI (TG-Nov. 23, 2006) 5 Creating Subject Alerts Creating a subject search alert can be a little more difficult than simply journal alert. Carefully consider your topic and try to identify as many of keywords in your topic as possible. Also try to think of synonyms for the term. A good search may require the use of keywords or Medical Subject Headings (MesH) terms. To maximize your results you should consult one of the librarians at the Neil John Maclean Health Sciences Library. From the PubMed search screen enter your keywords into the search box. Group like or synonymous terms in parenthesis and use the OR operator to combine them together. Combine differing concepts together with the AND operator. Example: To find west nile virus in Manitoba or Canada (west nile virus) AND (manitoba* OR canad* OR prairie*) Use the * (asterisk) symbol to retrieve variant word spellings or variant word endings. Example: To find suicide or suicidal and impulse or impulsive or impulsivity and child or children or childhood: suicid* AND impuls* AND child* AND abuse Use filed tags to restrict your search to certain fields in a PubMed record. o o o o Text Words [TW] Includes all words and numbers in the title, abstract, other abstract, MeSH terms, MeSH Subheadings, Publication Types, Substance Names, Personal Name as Subject, or MEDLINE Secondary Source. Example: to find patient safety as a text word enter patient safety[tw] Title [TI] includes words and numbers included in the title of a citation. Example: to find medication reconciliation in titles of articles enter medication reconciliation [TI] Title/Abstract [TIAB] Words and numbers included in the title, abstract, and other abstract of a citation. English language abstracts are taken directly from the published article. If an article does not have a published abstract, NLM does not create one. Example: to find waiting lists in titles and abstract enter waiting lists[tiab] Medical Subject Headings [MeSH] includes only MeSH terms Example: to find medical errors in subject headins search medical errors [MeSH]

6 Creating Subject or Journal Alterts with My NCBI (TG-Nov. 23, 2006) 6 Set limits on your search by clicking on the Limits tab. It is a good idea to under Languages to: English; Type of Article: Journal Article (to avoid receiving letters to editor or editorials); Human or Animal: Human (if you are not interested in animal studies or articles appearing in Veterinary journals). Select any other limits that you think might help to keep your profile more focused. Click on Go to apply the limits. Click on Save Search once you have returned to the PubMed Search Screen. You may be prompted to enter your My NCBI login and password. Once you have logged in, you will be prompted to set up the alert for the title. Choose a name for the search that is meaningful. Move the radio button to Yes so that you receive an alert of new updates Choose the frequency with which you would like to receive results Change the format to Abstract or AbstractPlus so that you will receive the abstract plus the UM Links information for each article. Change the maximum number of items to 50 (or less if that is what you prefer). If you want to receive results even if there are no new results place click on the checkbox next to Yes. If there is any additional information you want to make not of, add this into the Additional Text box. For example, you might wish to remind yourself to forward the results to a group of people. Click on OK and your search on this topic is now established.

7 Creating Subject or Journal Alterts with My NCBI (TG-Nov. 23, 2006) 7 To review or modify any of your saved searches, click on My NCBI You can modify the delivery details of the search by clicking on schedule for it (e.g. Daily) To run the search in PubMed and make modifications, click on the Search name (e.g. Patient input). You will need to make the modifications in the PubMed screen and then resave the search. Be sure to delete the original search. Results and Accessing or Ordering Articles When you receive your results, you will be able to click on the UM Links icon to view the full text of the article (if the article is available online).

8 Creating Subject or Journal Alterts with My NCBI (TG-Nov. 23, 2006) 8 Click on the UM Links button to check electronic availability of any articles you receive. You will be prompted to enter your library ID and PIN. If the article in your alert is not available online, choose a pickup location from the pulldown menu. WRHA and personal care home staff can use the WRHA/PCH location. Then click on the Document Delivery link Fill in your personal information into the Document Delivery Request form. The article information will be automatically input into the form. Click Send Request to order the article. It will be delivered in three to five working days.