GUIDELINES for Editors

Reference Pages

Content The Reference page is named for the link group with which it is associated and must have a unique name. At this time we are not including any direct links to primary literature, only directed searches. The Medicine domain reference page should include only links to PubMed Search and Google Scholar. The procedure for setting these up is described below.

PubMed Search

Overview
Topic: The terms used for setting topic parameters should be MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) terms, in order to create a more powerful and specific search, using subheadings to narrow and focus the query. These terms can be looked up on the PubMed web page under MeSH Database. For specific queries not included in MeSH, insert the word or phrase including variations.

Journals: Each section in bmesource encompasses a different specialty field therefore a different set of journals is needed for each. Each specific set of journals consists of section-specific journals (selected by top impact factors) as well as several multidisciplinary journals (Nature, Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Scientific American and Lancet). Generally, a total of no more than 7 journals should be queried at one time.

Publication Type: Good general overviews of each topic can be found by limiting the query to review articles. For most queries, with all limiting constraints applied, this delivers at least two quality review articles, but when there are not sufficient review articles, this constraint is dropped and all articles within the other specified parameters are retrieved.

Date Restrictions: To keep the information up-to-date, limits are imposed on publication dates, restriction to no older than five years. Because PubMed has static date restrictions, the date restrictions have been set for 1999 to 2010 to cover the last five years.

Breakdown of code: As an example we are using Coronary Artery disease diagnosis in Lancet and Scientific American as a review article from 1999-2010.

Start (always the same):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=PureSearch&db=pubmed&details_term=

Disease or Medical condition: (note: %22 is interpreted by PubMed as a doublequote, %20 as a space, %5B is a square bracket, open; %5D is closed; %2C is a comma)

%22coronary%20arteriosclerosis%22%5BMeSH%20Terms%5D%20

Diagnosis
AND%20%22diagnosis%22%5BSubheading%5D%20

Journal:
AND%20%28%28%22Lancet%22%5BJournal%5D%20OR%20%22Sci%20Am
%22%5BJournal%5D%29%20

Literature spec:
AND%20%22Review%22%5Bptyp%5D%20

Date spec: 1999-2010
AND%20%221999%22%5BPDAT%5D%20%3A%20%222010%22%5BPDAT%5D

In total:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=PureSearch&db=pubmed&
details_term=%22coronary%20arteriosclerosis%22%5BMeSH%20Terms%5D%20
AND%20%22diagnosis%22%5BSubheading%5D%20AND%20%28%28%22Lancet%22%
5BJournal%5D%20OR%20%22Sci%2Am%22%5BJournal%5D%29%20AND%20%22Review
%22%5Bptyp%5D%20AND%20%221999%22%5BPDAT%5D%20%3A%20%222010%22
%5BPDAT%5D

Google Scholar Search

Overview:
You can search through Scholar using a string of terms and get a return of articles ordered by a variety of criteria including citation number, date or publishing journal. Constraints can be imposed by including appropriate words, such as review. Google Scholar restricts the string of words at this time to 10 words. Google Scholar does not restrict to MeSH Terms consistently, so plurals and variations of a concept must be included when possible.

Example: As an example we are using Coronary Artery disease diagnosis in Lancet and Scientific American as a review article. The string of 10 words would be:

Coronary disease, coronary arteriosclerosis, diagnosis, review

In total:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22coronary+arteriosclerosis%22%5BMeSH%5D%2C+
%22coronary+disease%22%5BMeSH%5D%2C+diagnosis+review+&btnG=Search