Efficient Academic

I have been always praying for a radical change to the NCBI interface…i somehow feel that is too crammed…not allowing newcomers to move around freely.But basically there must be several improvements in the usability of the system itself.Now atleast Pubmed has a quite interesting and intuitive interface, Courtesy:Hubmed.making waves with the apt catchline

“An alternative interface to the PubMed medical literature database“

This is what makes Hubmed appealing..

1. Quick access to searches with a Firefox search plugin or a HubMed bookmarklet (drag to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar).
2. Export citations in RIS, BibTeX, RDF and MODS formats, or directly to RefWorks.Unzip HubMed’s import filter into Endnote’s Filters folder for direct import into Endnote, or install the RIS Export plugin for direct import into ProCite, RefMan and older versions of Endnote.
3. Use the Citation Finder to convert reference lists from PDFs into search results.
4. Create lists of closely related papers using Rank Relations, then visualise and browse clusters of related papers using TouchGraph (requires Java).
5. Graph occurrences of keywords in published papers over time.
6. Tag and store annotated metadata for articles of interest.

By the way you can drop in at their

Technorati Tags: pubmed,hubmed,journals,scientific, papers,research, papers

To put it simply, Mystickies allows you to place little yellow squares of digital paper anywhere and everywhere you feel like in the whole wide web. Along with the ability to put sticky notes on webpages mystickies offers a powerfull interface to browse, search, sort, edit and generally have a wonderfull time with your sticky notes from any computer that has internet access

Now you can just leave a note on the Pubmed page to look for that reference which you could not find immediately.I use the sticky on Citeulike to remind me of that paper that my friend suggested!..the possibilities are infinite try it.

Technorati Tags: stickies,postitnotes,reminder

Please do email me if you have any tips/tricks,suggestions that you feel would be of help to the academic community.I will be more than happy to post them.If you can find time to contribute to the Efficient Academic by way of making posts whenever possible please do let me know,i would be happy to have you as one of the contributing authors.

Drop me a line at bala(at)shoutsofnothingness(dot)net

Anybody who has been working with PDF files knows that organising them is really a problem.Especially when the files are research papers.i have tried several methods that are available currently available to organise PDF files,including annotating them with Endnote,using google desktop to index them,special file organising software like easy articles, personal brain ,and Paperworks.But they all lacked some or other feature that was indispensible.
If you are in the academic field (who are my target audience) then you must be knowing that just organsing PDFs is not enough you need to have the citation/bibliographic data for the papers also.I have been using this service called Citeulike which allows you to store the paper references that you need or intend to read and also allows you to export the reference to Endnote.Till now the service allowed you to store just the reference!..now a new feature has been added that actually allows you to upload the corresponding PDF file for a reference,whereby you can access the PDF when and wherever you want via an internet connected PC.The ease with which you can access your files is just mindblowing. Head overand try the fantastic service.

Technorati Tags: PDF, organising, researchpapers, endnote, papers

One of the aspects that has been revolutionized by the advent of Web 2.0 is “Web Search”.We are all familiar with the mundane search that we do with google (or any other search engine).But then in order to update your search results one had to perform the search time and again,untill search updates were available via email.But then email is passe.Hot now is RSS (Really simple syndication or Rich site summary).Now literature or citation searches on Pubmed are available through RSS.I will not tell you how to setup an RSS subscription for your pubmed search as there are sufficient posts/articles available on the net.I have some links that might be helpful.

• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj05/mj05_rss.html
• http://www.rssgov.com/archives/000136.html
• http://nnlm.gov/psr/newsletter/?p=82
• http://www.library.ucsf.edu/db/pubmed/help/rssfeeds.html

Technorati Tags: RSS, pubmed, NCBI, search,