PubMed: What’s New and What’s Ahead

By Shamsha Damani, M.D Anderson Cancer Center

 

PubMed has been going through a lot of changes lately and it is sort of hard to keep up. Some changes are apparent, and some are hidden. I’ve captured some screenshots to show what is new and also what to expect in the months ahead!


PubMed has rolled out some new features and I’ll summarize them below:


Single Citation Matcher: After hearing from many librarians and users, NLM has decided not to do away with the Single Citation Matcher. I use this feature quite often and am very glad that it is staying!

Citation Sensor: This new feature makes Single Citation Matcher a bit unnecessary! You can type parts of your citation in the search box and it will find the closest matches for you. Here is an example:




The more information you provide, the more precise the results. Here is another example if you enter volume, issue, and page number:


Title Matching:
If you know the complete title of your article, you can paste it into the search box as well instead of going to Single Citation Matcher. Here is an example:

I recently tested title matching and was not very successful. Needless to say that I will be using Single Citation Matcher for a little while longer!


New Summary Format: The results used to be presented with authors first; now the results are displayed with the title first. Subtle but good change!

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My NCBI Navigation: The My NCBI page went through a major makeover and looks very different. Only with lots of practice have I learned how to navigate this!


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Discovery – Search Results: You may have noticed “ads” that pop up on the right side of your screen when you do a search. Yes, NLM calls them “ads”! I think they are handy and are a great discovery tool when you are grasping at straws or have too many results to wade through! Discovery Single Citation is even handier! I don’t think that all the discovery features are live yet so keep paying attention to the “ads!” Here are some examples:


 

PubMed Collections: Collections can now be public or private. Having a public collection makes it easier to share results since it launches you straight into PubMed. You can also embed the HTML code on a webpage! Here is how to set up public/private collections:

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Custom Filters: Filters are something I’ve been a bit scared of in the past. But I felt brave enough to try this new feature. I created a custom filter for M. D. Anderson 1st authors, which appeared to work fine. However, some issues have been reported when using these filters and I’m now reminded of why I did not like the filters in the first place! Please test this feature and let me know what you guys think.






So what is new? I saw some mock-up screenshots of the new PubMed interface at MLA’09 in May and they promised to share them later. However, I was most disappointed since they only shared one screenshot and also added this caveat: “things can and likely will change”. Here is the much-prized screenshot:


 

I think that most of these changes are good and the new interface will hopefully make it easier for some novice users to search PubMed. I purposefully omitted the changes in automatic term mapping because Jacqueline covers it very well in her earlier blog post.  My one hope is to see NLM participate more in social media (especially Twitter!) so more voices are heard.  The NLM reps at MLA’09 were extremely nice and open to suggestions; it would be nice if they could extend their presence in social networking venues as well.


Shamsha Damani