Duke Medical Center Library & Archives Blog

The journal Science recently published the results of a "sting operation" that involved sending poor quality research to several Open Access journals. The article, "Who's Afraid of Peer Review," begins with the tantalizing story:

"On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It as the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more…

Tags: open access

Call for Papers for the next issue of the Medical Student Research Journal (MSRJ)!

The MSRJ, sponsored by The College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, is the only  online academic journal in the U.S. operated by medical students for medical students. The MSRJ provides medical students with an excellent opportunity to publish, review manuscripts, or learn about the peer review process and all aspects of journal operations.  All manuscripts undergo a strict peer review by students who have completed specialized training. Manuscript submissions are accepted from medical students worldwide. All articles are indexed and identified with a unique DOI number. The deadline for the next Winter Issue is October 1st, and the deadline for…

Tags: publishing

Pulse--voices from the heart of medicine was launched in 2008 by the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in collaboration with educators around the country.  Every Friday, Pulse e-mails its readers a first-person story or poem about giving or receiving health care. The pieces are written by patients, physicians, students, nurses and other health professionals.

Pulse is read for…

Zotero (zoh-TAIR-oh) is a free citation management tool that conveniently “lives in” your Web browser, where you do the majority of your work and research. Most commonly, Zotero works as an add-on for the Firefox browser. However, there is a Zotero standalone version that is compatible with Safari and Chrome.

Zotero is easy to use and has many of the same, as well as some unique, features as EndNote and RefWorks.  With Zotero, you can:

• Organize & manage references into searchable collections
• Insert citations as you write using the Zotero word-processing plug-in
• Create formatted bibliographies in many different styles
• Attach PDFs, notes and images to references
• Easily add citations directly from databases and…

Categories: Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: zotero, citation management, endnote, refworks

A hot topic in the news recently is the increasing number of scientific studies that have been discovered to be wrong and are retracted by their publishers. Following that, the October 2012 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims that the majority of retractions are due to some type of misconduct, and not just honest mistakes.

The blog Retraction Watch tracks such retractions and has notified its readers of hundreds of journal-article withdrawals.

Retraction Watch uses the motto "Tracking retractions as a window into the…

Categories: Alerts, Explore Tools

A good mystery novel, at its core, consists of interesting characters, a compelling plot, and puzzle-solving.  In these respects, the job of an archivist mirrors that of a detective, as the archivist must reconstruct the pasts of people or objects from fragments of information.  While such mysteries come in a variety of forms, the most common is determining the history, or provenance, of an item or collection.  

Recently a series of paintings in the Medical Center Library’s Artwork Collection posed such a challenge.  The paintings, done in 1944 by Frank Beresford, depict scenes of the U.S. Army 65th General Hospital Unit at work during World War II in the Eastern Theater of Operations (E.T.O.).  Absent from the Library’s inventory…

Tags: archives

Scholars@Duke is a new, searchable research network and faculty directory designed to replace the aging Faculty Research Database (FReD) system. It is publicly available and designed to bring together information about the research and teaching activities of Duke faculty members.  The first phase was introduced in May and features faculty in the School of Medicine.

This tool will allow you to:

Categories: Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: Scholars@Duke

In April, the School of Nursing welcomed back its graduates for their annual alumni weekend. Nursing education has a long and rich history here at Duke. From its beginnings in 1931 to the present day, Duke has attracted the best faculty and produced top graduates. Among these graduates is a unique group that exemplified service: the Cadet Nurses.

On April 30, 1941, prior to U.S. involvement in World War II, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) issued a call for schools of nursing to increase enrollment in order to train more nurses for military, health, and civilian service. Duke responded by admitting 84 students in October, 1941, a boost from 58 the previous year.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor later that year, the…

Tags: archives, nursing

The Duke University Medical Center Archives collects, preserves, and provides access to materials documenting the history of the DUMC community, from the 1930s to the present. This new guide provides a brief overview of the Archives, including information about the collections, how to find items, as well as suggestions of other helpful resources.

Categories: Resource Updates

Tags: guide, archives

"Research impact is the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy. It embraces all the diverse ways that research-related skills benefit individuals, organisations and nations." Research Councils UK (RCUK)

The Library has developed a new guide, "Enhance Your Research Impact," to help researchers quantify and improve their research impact!

It is important that researchers know their impact as it can help:

• Support applications for tenure or promotion
• Justify requests for grants and other funding
• Quantify and determine how their research is being used…

Tags: guide, research

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now requiring that all institutions be compliant with the Public Access Policy. 

NIH will delay processing of non-competing continuation grant awards with a start date of July 1, 2013 or beyond, if your publications are NOT compliant.  See the full policy at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-12-142.html

The Library has developed a new guide with instructions for complying with the NIH policy (http://guides.mclibrary.duke.edu/nihpapcompliance). …

Categories: Alerts

Tags: NIH Public Access Policy, My NCBI