Tag: Biomedical literature

A more modern PMC is coming – let us know what you think in PMC Labs!

We’re updating PubMed Central (PMC) to a give you a more modern and easier to use site and we want your feedback. The first phase of this work is now on PMC Labs  for you to explore and provide feedback.

In the first phase we have focused on modernizing PMC’s platform to create a more stable and easy-to-update environment. This also includes some initial changes to the homepage (Figure 1), site organization, and article pages (Figure 2). Many of the updates you see on the Labs site create a similar look and feel for PMC and PubMed, reorganizing documentation to highlight the most accessed and important content first and consolidating redundant features to provide a smoother experience. Please visit PMC Labs to try out the PMC updates and provide feedback using the buttons on the lower right-hand side of the Labs pages (Figure 1). We will update the current PMC website with new features once we gather your input on the Labs site.

Figure 1. The PMC Labs homepage featuring the PMC full text search bar,  links to the most heavily used documentation, information for distinct groups of PMC users (Authors, Publishers, and Developers), statistics on deposits, an updated “New in PMC section” (not shown),  and a prominent Feedback link (circled) for you to provide comments and suggestions. Continue reading “A more modern PMC is coming – let us know what you think in PMC Labs!”

New PubMed updates and retirement of legacy PubMed on October 31

The new PubMed has been the default now since May, and more than 99% of you are using the new site. The recent NLM technical bulletin has details on features that we have added to the new PubMed based on your requests.

Legacy PubMed, which has been available in parallel with the new PubMed, will be finally taken down after October 31, 2020.  We will continue to provide API access to PubMed through the E-utilities, which uses the legacy system, for the foreseeable future and until we can transition to an API that accesses the new system.

We understand that it can take time to adapt to changes and find favorite features in a new interface. Several learning and training resources are available to help you use the new PubMed: Continue reading “New PubMed updates and retirement of legacy PubMed on October 31”

The New and Improved PubMed® — We Are Listening

Today marks 5 weeks since the new PubMed was made the default version. Throughout this process, we promised to listen, and we heard from you!

This was a huge change

We know change isn’t always easy, especially with major changes to a familiar service or product. We are staunch believers in making incremental changes whenever possible: releasing small improvements, observing the effects, gathering user feedback, and then using that data to make further modifications. This time, an incremental approach to improving PubMed wasn’t feasible. We needed to make major changes under the hood (new databases, cloud delivery, new web architecture, etc.) for PubMed to be sustainable going forward.

User feedback is invaluable: it has played an enormous role in updates over the 24 years PubMed has been in existence, and it continues to do so. To prepare for new PubMed, we launched the beta version in 2017, then called PubMed Labs, as a way to set up the new framework and solicit feedback from our users. During development and since, we reached out to our stakeholders with presentations, webinars, handouts, FAQstoolkits, and tutorials, including a series of four 90- minute online classes, How PubMed® Works, many of which continue to be available.

We understand that not everyone had a chance to put the new PubMed through its paces, and we’re grateful to those of you who provided feedback along the way, whether it was by sending questions or comments using the feedback button, by discussing with us how you accomplish your work with PubMed, or by filling out a survey.

For some, when the new version of PubMed became the default last month, it was a huge shift. The ways in which you were accustomed to working with the system changed. We heard from some of you that you were used to a particular feature being available on PubMed and now you don’t know where to find it.

Continue reading “The New and Improved PubMed® — We Are Listening”

CORD-19: A New Machine Readable COVID-19 Literature Dataset

Are you interested in mining literature about COVID-19 and the novel SARS-Cov-2 virus? You may want to check out the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). CORD-19 is a collection of more than 13,000 full text articles that focus on COVID-19 and coronaviruses and that were assembled from PMC, the WHO, bioRxiv, and medRxiv. To produce this dataset, the National Library of Medicine partnered with colleagues from the Allen Institute for AI, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Kaggle, Microsoft, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

CORD-19 is available from the Allen Institute and will be updated weekly as new articles become available. The article data are formatted in JSON, making the collection ideal for computational methods such as data mining, machine learning, and natural language processing. We hope this collection serves as a call to action for the community to improve our understanding of coronaviruses and the human diseases they cause. Have a look and let us know what you think!

Computational Medicine Codeathon and AWS workshop at Chapel Hill in March

Computational Medicine Codeathon and AWS workshop at Chapel Hill in March

NIH is pleased to announce a computational medicine-focused codeathon. To apply, please complete the application form by February 25, 2020. We will also be offering a free workshop, AWS Technical Essentials, the day before the codeathon. Read on for more information about the event. Continue reading “Computational Medicine Codeathon and AWS workshop at Chapel Hill in March”

New PubMed Updates: User Guide, MyNCBI, and more

As you may have heard, we are working on a new version of PubMed, and we’ve recently released some new features that you can check out.

new user guide answers many common questions about how best to use the new site. We’ve also added links on the new PubMed homepage to many popular sites including the E-utilities, Advanced Search, and the MeSH database.

The action menu (Figure 1) now contains Collections and My Bibliography, allowing you to manage and share groups of citations. After running a search, you will also find a “Create alert” link under the search box that lets you set up automatic My NCBI email updates for your search.

Action menu on new PubMed
Figure 1. New PubMed search result page showing the new “Create alert” link and updated action menu.

Going forward, we will continue to develop new features leading up to the time when this new version of PubMed will replace the legacy PubMed. As this progresses, we would love to hear what you think about these new additions! Please use the “Feedback” button (available on every page of the new PubMed) to submit your comments, questions, or concerns.

Try Our New, Experimental PubMed Search and User Interface in PubMed Labs

NLM needs your input. We are experimenting with a new PubMed search algorithm, as well as a modern, mobile-first user interface, and want to know what you think. You can try out these experimental elements at PubMed Labs, a website we created for the very purpose of giving potential new PubMed features a test drive and gathering user opinions.

Please note that PubMed Labs includes only a limited set of features at this time and not the full set of PubMed tools. The absence of a feature or tool on PubMed Labs does not mean we plan to eliminate it from PubMed; it simply means we are not testing it now!

The key elements we are testing are:

In PubMed Labs, search results are listed by best match. The best match button is at the top right; you can also click the "most recent" button (to the right of "best match") to sort by date.

  • A new search algorithm for ranking (ordering) the best matches to your query

Based on analysis of data obtained from anonymous PubMed search logs, we have developed a new algorithm that we believe does a much better job of sorting search results by their relevance, or “best match,” to your query. This new algorithm incorporates machine learning to re-rank the top articles returned.

We were so excited by results with this algorithm that we already implemented it in PubMed, but it is still experimental and we would very much appreciate hearing what you think. Part of our test in PubMed Labs is having best match be the default sort, instead of PubMed’s default of sorting by most recent articles. If you find that you prefer to sort by the most recent articles instead, it takes only a simple click of a button to do so.

Interested in specifics about the new algorithm? You can read more in this NLM Technical Bulletin.

Continue reading “Try Our New, Experimental PubMed Search and User Interface in PubMed Labs”

Essentials of Glycobiology, Third Edition & New Glycan Website Now Available at NCBI

Essentials of Glycobiology, Third Edition & New Glycan Website Now Available at NCBI

Glycobiology—the study of the structure, biosynthesis, biology, and evolution of glycans (the sugar chains synthesized by all living cells)—is a rapidly growing field in the natural sciences, with broad relevance to many areas of basic research, biomedicine, and biotechnology.

NCBI has two new glycobiology resources: the third edition of a definitive work in the field, Essentials of Glycobiology, and a new NCBI Glycans website that includes links to some useful external resources as well as the Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans (SNFG).

essentials of glycobiology

Continue reading “Essentials of Glycobiology, Third Edition & New Glycan Website Now Available at NCBI”

Identifying and Correlating Chemical Names & Synonyms

This blog post is intended for people who refer to chemical names/symbols and synonyms in databases like PubMed and PubChem, or in their own scientific papers. There is a similar post for gene symbols and names.

During the research and publishing process, scientists need to refer to their chemicals-of-interest. While there are standardized nomenclatures (IUPAC, SMILESInChITM, etc.), different labs sometimes use different names for the same chemical.

The NCBI PubChem project has set up a system to identify and correlate these various names as well as ‘alias’, ‘synonym’, or ‘also known as’ terms that have been used in the literature.

Continue reading “Identifying and Correlating Chemical Names & Synonyms”

Streptococcus pyogenes “A to Zs” Covered in New Book, Freely Available on NCBI Bookshelf

Streptococcus pyogenes “A to Zs” Covered in New Book, Freely Available on NCBI Bookshelf

The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center has published an open-access book called “Streptococcus pyogenes: Basic Biology to Clinical Manifestations” that provides a comprehensive review of research on the bacteria. The university’s first online, open-access book, “Streptococcus pyogenes” is freely available on NCBI’s Bookshelf, at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK333424/.
S.pyogenes Book on the NCBI Bookshelf

Streptococcus pyogenes (Group A Streptococcus) is responsible for diseases such as scarlet fever, pharyngitis, impetigo, cellulitis, necrotizing fasciitis and toxic shock syndrome, as well as the sequelae of rheumatic fever and acute poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis. The book aims to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive review of research on Streptococcus pyogenes, including its basic biology, epidemiology, genetics and pathways that facilitate group A streptococcal infections. Continue reading “Streptococcus pyogenes “A to Zs” Covered in New Book, Freely Available on NCBI Bookshelf”