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, FAQs, toolkits, 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” →
