Duke Medical Center Library & Archives Blog

Do you have trouble communicating with Non-Scientists? Check out these tips from leading weather scientist, Dr. Marshall Shepherd.

• Know your audience. Many scientists are guilty of delivering the same message to the Rotary Club or Congressional Staffers that they give at a science conference. Research and understand your audience. Anthony Leiserowitz, an excellent climate communication scholar at Yale, once told me, "Not knowing your audience is like throwing darts at a dartboard with the lights off."

• Get to the point. As scientists we are trained to describe a ton of details and background information before we give the final results…

Tags: for researchers, impact, social networking, teaching, writing

PubMed Commons lets you in on the research conversation. It is a system that enables researchers to share opinions and information about scientific publications. If you are listed on even one item indexed in PubMed, you are eligible to become a member of PubMed Commons. You will need a My NCBI account and an invitation to join PubMed Commons. Both are free of charge.

Getting an invitation to PubMed Commons:

•  E-mail addresses of eligible authors have been collected from the NIH, the Wellcome Trust and authors' email addresses in PubMed and PubMed Central. …

Categories: Explore Tools

Tags: pubmed, for researchers, My NCBI, publications, research

As Pat Thibodeau, Associate Dean for Library Services & Archives, prepares to retire at the end of March, she leaves a rich legacy of innovation, collaboration, and mentorship. During her entire career and twenty-four-year tenure at Duke, the medical and library professions have both undergone many changes and faced many challenges, yet Pat has admirably led and guided the Duke Medical Center Library & Archives into the digital age. Under her leadership, the library has pushed forward and not only survived, but also thrived and grown to become an important leader in the field.

Pat first came to Duke in 1993 as Associate Director for the Library, but her work in libraries began long before then. Her passion for the field was born while volunteering in her high school…

Categories: Alerts

We have extended our reference services from in-person, live chat, and phone to also include texting! Whether you are rushing straight from the parking garage to grand rounds or are sitting in a comfy chair right in the library, you can now pull out your phone and text with a medical librarian.  Have a quick question, having problems getting article access, or want to set up a consultation? Text us at 919.629.1113 [Mon - Fri from 9a-5p] and Ask a Librarian.  #txtus2day

Categories: Alerts, Resource Updates

Scholars@Duke is a profile system for faculty and staff to display information about their scholarly activity, such as education, positions, publications, and presentations. Profiles on Scholars@Duke are searchable and viewable by anyone. The data that populates the Selected Publications section of a Scholars@Duke profile is pulled from a linked profile in Elements. You will need your Duke NetID and password to access Elements.

Elements pulls publication data from databases such as…

Categories: Resource Updates

Tags: Scholars@Duke, Elements

The Health Professions Education Collaborative, a new partnership with UNC and the Durham VA Medical Center, will kick off events in March and April to enable collaborations and improve health outcomes.

March 8, 2017
Topic: Interprofessional Collaboration and Networking
Location: UNC School of Nursing Rm 217 
Time: 4:30-6:30p 

April 18, 2017
Topic: Interprofessional Team Building in Action
Location: Center for Nursing Discovery, Duke SON
Time: 1:00-5:00p

Tags: Duke Ahead, nursing

Choosing a journal for your newest article is not always easy. While you may wish to publish in a high impact journal, there are many factors to consider when picking a journal to submit your latest article, such as audience and potential visibility. Here are a few of our favorite tools for identifying potentially relevant journals for your work:

1. Web of Science or Scopus: These databases allow you to search for keywords and then analyze the results by journal or source title. This lets you see what journals publish most on certain topics.
2. JANE: Journal / Author Name Estimator…

Tags: journals, publishing

The Library is now offering the updated 5th edition of Bates' Visual Guide to Physical Examination which includes the Bates' Physical Examination Videos as well as OSCE Clinical Skills Videos.

In addition to the 8 hrs of video content covering head-to-toe and systems-based physical examination techniques, this online resource also provides:

• differential diagnosis, diagnostic considerations, and likely diagnosis
• keyword search
• anatomy review
• sample digital write-up of the physical examination findings
• options to share a video with colleagues
• PDF transcripts and closed captioning for each video

The…

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: exam, bates, video

"I wish I'd known about this sooner!" is what people often say when they encounter EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, or any other reference management tool.

Discover the wonders of easily storing, organizing, and citing your references by:

• Using this handy chart to decide which reference management tool best fits your needs
• Getting started with EndNote step-by-step
• Getting started with Zotero step-by-step

If you already use EndNote, read our…

Categories: Resource Updates

Tags: endnote, zotero, mendeley

The h-index is an author-level metric, originally proposed by Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005, to simultaneously measure productivity (number of papers published) and citation impact (number of times a paper is cited). If you’re interested, you can read Hirsch’s original proposal for the h-index here.

For a particular scholar, their h-index is the number of h published papers where each paper has been cited at least h times. For example, if Dr. Jane Doe has an h-index of 12, then she has published 12 papers that have each been cited at least 12 times.  The h-index attempts to measure both the productivity and the apparent scientific impact of…

Categories: Explore Tools

Tags: h-index, scopus, impact, metrics

As of January 1, 2017, the Gates Foundation Open Access Policy will require that all Gates Foundation-funded research be promptly and broadly disseminated. What does this mean? 

From the Foundation Website:

Our Open Access policy contains the following elements:

1. Publications Are Discoverable and Accessible Online.  Publications will be deposited in a specified repository(s) with proper tagging of metadata.
2. Publication Will Be On “Open Access” Terms.  All publications shall be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC BY 4.0) or an equivalent license. This will permit all users of the publication to copy and…

Tags: publishing, open access

Whether you're new to EndNote or a long-time fan, improve your EndNote experience with these five advanced features.

1. Customize how EndNote looks

Some of our favorite Preferences include:

• Within "Display Fonts," make that font size bigger!
• Within "PDF Handling," have EndNote rename PDF files as Author + Year + Title.
• Within "Display Fields," hide the fields you don't use (e.g. read/unread status) and display those you do (e.g. Research Notes). Also, uncheck the box to "Display all authors in the Author field."
• Experiment with the library layout on a PC or on a…

Categories: Resource Updates

Tags: endnote, citation management

DynaMed Plus, an evidence-based point-of-care information resource is available. It's accessible through the Library's Clinical Tools, Databases page, and via mobile devices.

By offering bulleted topic overviews on diseases, drugs and other therapies, DynaMed Plus seeks to make the best available evidence easier…

Categories: Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: DynaMed Plus

As of November 1, 2016, you can pay your invoice for Interlibrary Loans (ILLs) online at https://payments.mclibrary.duke.edu/ill using a credit card. Just enter the invoice number, payment amount, and billing information.  This is a secure payment system which uses DukePay and meets all of Duke’s criteria for handling online credit card payments.

Copies from any of the Duke Library collections are still free to the Duke community. Duke patrons will only receive an invoice for a journal article if we have to get it from a non-Duke library. 

In early 2017, we hope to launch online payments by faculty and staff for fines and lost books, as well as links for giving gifts to the…

Categories: Alerts, Resource Updates

Have you ever wondered if you are getting all that you can from PubMed? Check out these tips and tricks to make sure you are finding all the research on your topic and getting free access to articles in the Duke collections.

1. Click on PubMed from the Medical Library’s Website to get full text available through Duke, or bookmark the link: https://mclibrary.duke.edu/pubmed

PubMed is liberally scattered throughout the Medical Library’s Website (on the main page under Quicklinks, Clinical Tools page, and more). Using one of these PubMed links…

Categories: Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: pubmed, research, literature search, My NCBI