PubMed is the main search engine of life sciences and the most important online tool for the majority of physicians. Many physicians and scientists keep going back to PubMed from time to time and do a search for their fabourite terms to see whether there are new additions to the database. It's a waste of time and effort as they could receive their PubMed updates via e-mail or RSS by using the Save Search function. You don’t have to search again and again, just sit back and wait for the next e-mail containing the newest articles being published in your field of interest.


The main page of Pubmed.com

First, create an NCBI account, do your regular search and click on the Save Search button:



It's your choice whether to just save your search query or to receive e-mail updates of new search results. You have to decide how often and in what format you would like to get the e-mail notifications.





You can also get an RSS feed of your favourite search query by using the Send to button so you can insert the new RSS feed into your feedreader (see more details about the procedure in Steps 3-5).

If you don't want to learn how to use RSS, PeRSSonalized Medicine, a free Webicina service, is created for you. Follow your favourite medical news, blogs, journals and social media sites in one click.



You can insert the term "rheumatology" or your field of interest into the custom Pubmed feed box, and you will receive the latest peer-reviewed articles focusing on that search term automatically. It means you don't have to keep going back to Pubmed week by week and check whether there are new additions to the database. But you let the information come to you.

Third-Party Pubmed tools

These tools are based on PubMed but try to open new ways in searching for different scientific/medical terms. For example, PubMed Reader is a free web-based research program for displaying PubMed / Medline search results on an individual basis. It means you can create your own up-to-date Medline and PubMed literature search.



BioWizard keeps you up-to-date with the most important published literature as chosen by the global biomedical research community. Users submit research articles they have found to be useful and interesting and the community rates these articles by scientific value. The best articles in a research field are brought to the top page for all to read and discuss.

Through Biowizard, you can get the best articles of your field (selected by the scientific community) via e-mail.



It works similarly to Digg.com or Reddit.com where users can submit content that others will rate and promote, but in science and medicine, those tools are not that useful as in other fields. You may find useful articles in the Science and Health categories of these community sites.



David Rothman manages a more than comprehensive list of 3rd party Pubmed tools.

Google Alerts provides e-mail updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your query or subject. It measn you receive an e-mail notification whenever something happens in your field.



Click here to create an alert with the form and click here to manage your subscriptions.





It currently offers four types of alert searches:

• News: an e-mail about new articles that make it into the top ten results of your Google News search.
• Web: an e-mail about new web pages that appear in the top twenty results for your Google Web search.
• Comprehensive: an e-mail containing the combination of both above.
• Groups: an e-mail about new posts make it into the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.

It also lets you determine how often you would like to receive an e-mail notification. Three options are available:

• once a day
• once a week
• as it happens

If you would like to be up-to-date about malaria treatment, you should use this:

"malaria treatment" [Type: Comprehensive, How Often: as it happens]

If you would like to know whether there is a new article about malaria treatment on Nature.com, you should use this:

"malaria treatment site:www.nature.com" [Type: Web, How Often: once a week]

If you would like to know whether anyone published a new article about malaria treatment in the USA, you should use this:

"malaria treatment location:USA" [Type: Web, How Often: once a week]

If you would like to know whether anyone linked to your site or blog, you should use this:

"link:nameofmysite.com" [Type: Web, How Often: as it happens]

RSSmeme is subscribed to a broad list of sites, and aggregates the results. You can find the most popular articles in a field of interest by using filters.


RSSmeme Popular Stories from Benjamin Golub on Vimeo.

WatchThatPage

DailyMe is a personalized news aggregator which helps you to keep track of changes in your field of interest. This is a platform that allows you to customize and and aggregate the news, blogs, columns and stories that interest you. As it's free to use, you only have to register and create an account.



You can select which categories/topics to follow, it's also possible to follow the sources of content such as specific newspapers or publications or specific keywords which you define.

Monitor This

Monitor This is a reputation management tool which lets you subscribe to 19 different search engine feeds at the same time for a search term that you define. You enter your favourite search term, click on make monitor.opml. The copy the text into a file named as monitor.opml and import it to your feed reader tool (you can read more about such tools in the next Steps of this e-course).

Tags are one of the most important and popular features of web 2.0. From the informational point of view, there is a huge difference between focusing on genetics in an article than to just mention the word genetics in that. That is why tags help you how to find content absolutely relevant to your needs.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English



If you want to track your field of interest that way, try del.icio.us. It is a social bookmarking service that lets you save your bookmarks online and share them with others. The tagging tools they use help you keep track of the most popular items and articles in your field of interest.


The main page of del.icio.us

Do a search (use a tag) to find the most popular content focusing on that term. Here is the Del.icio.us page for the tag medicine:


The medicine page of del.icio.us



The Life in the Fast Lane blog published a comprehensive review about the social bookmarking sites for physicians including this video.



A free online reference management for all researchers, clinicians and scientists that requires no download can be found at Connotea.com. It can quickly save and organize links to your references, moreover you can follow the new additions to a tag by RSS.



Features include:

• sharing references with your colleagues
• accessing references from any computer
• saving references with just one click

Do a search for your favourite medical term and follow the RSS feed if the results to get the best/selected articles in your field of interest automatically. Here is an example with the term medicine:


http://www.connotea.org/rss/search?q=medicine

Twitter and Friendfeed are microblogging servies as you can only send SMS-like messages through Twitter and can use Friendfeed as a microblog. Both represent unique ways for communication and networking and can also serve as a tool to get the latest information about various events and subjects.



A video about Twitter:



A video about Friendfeed:



The Google Alert version of Twitter is called TweetBeep and it alerts you by e-mail the keyword you flagged for attention is mentioned on Twitter.



With Tweetscan, you can do searches for your keywords and find out what others write about that. You can also create an RSS feed of your query.



You can do the same with the search service of Twitter as well.





Friendfeed is a service than enables you to follow web pages, photos, videos and slideshows that your collegues share. It is also interactive and efficient regarding communication and discussions.



You can easily follow rooms where people from the same field of interest can share images, videos and ideas with each other. A few rooms that you might find interesting:

• Doctors, Students, & Health Care Professionals
• Science 2.0
• Second Life
• The Life Scientists