Following the scientific literature is a difficult task, it's not something you can do lying on the beach. Among the huge number of articles that are published every day only a few really matter to you. These are the articles you are going to have the time to read and that are relevant to your research.
In order to spot the relevant papers, there are a number of thematic approaches. For example, most journals publish articles in a relatively restricted field - and so a scientist can follow a thematic journal (like PLOS, Nature Biotechnology, etc). But then you'll still receive a lot of information to be sorted and you will obviously notice only the recent work. Maybe that interesting article you are waiting for has been published 5 years ago and you will then never ever notice it that way.
You can also keep track of literature with a keywords search (that you save somehow). This approach presents some problems too: What keywords should you search for? Your research is certainly more complex and subtle than "cancer p53" or "sequence analysis".
PubMed Watcher is an experimental tool designed to help biomedical scientists to read efficiently adequate literature. The tool is built based on the following assumptions:
- Relevant papers are forever: PubMed Watcher abstracts away from the publishing date.
- Relevant papers are everywhere: The tool considers all the articles indexed by PubMed.
- Your research cannot be defined by a few keywords only: PubMed Watcher relies on Key Articles as a means to express the science you care about.
More details and the methodology behind the tool is presented here alongside an example to illustrate how it works.
PubMed Watcher is still in beta testing, please submit your feedback or idea for improvements here or directly by email.
Samuel
Samuel
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