Searching High and Low

PLOS has a new article that examines the academic publishing policies on “authorship, ghostwriting, and conflicts of interest” currently in place at 50 medical schools in the US.  The 50 schools were selected based on their appearance in US News’ Best Medical Schools 2009 list.

Some of the results show that just over half of these top 50 schools do not have a published policy on authorship or ghostwriting and that only 13 of the 50 schools have policies in place that prohibit ghostwriting. The paper has an excellent reference list pointing to other research and writing on the topic of ghostwriting in medical journals.
If you don’t know much about ghostwriting, here’s a good starting point:

Ghostwriting: The Dirty Little Secret of Medical Publishing That Just Got Bigger

The Fort-Worth Star Telegram reports on legislation passed in Texas earlier this year (2009) that would enable the Texas Education Agency to create an online repository of open source textbooks for schools to adopt.  The state would also have the right to modify and update the works after purchase.

Wired Campus reports on DeepDyve, a company that deals in scholarly publishing with a Netflix-like rental model. It offers articles from traditional publishers as well as open access sources.  Open access articles can be viewed for free while individual “premium” articles (from traditional publishers) can be rented for 24 hour period.  Rental prices start at 99 cents. It’s important to note that articles cannot be printed or downloaded, only viewed on screen.

As with Netflix, monthly subscriptions are available: $9.99/20 articles OR $19.99/unlimited articles.

Searching

Some of the things I noticed while searching:

–It does not understand DOIs.  Plugging a DOI into the search box won’t find your article like CrossRef would. In some cases it would list the DOI in the citation, so I knew it was there, but finding it using the search was fruitless.

–The date of publication on some (maybe, all?) records pulled from Medline are wrong.  This could be a simple fix.  DeepDyve appears to be incorrectly using Medline’s DA field (date created) as the date of publication instead of using the DP field (date of publication).  Could make cause confusion for those who require accurate citations.

Here’s an example article that appears in both DeepDyve and Medline:

Frost, R., Hartl, T., Christian, R., & Williams, N. (1995). The value of possessions in compulsive hoarding: patterns of use and attachment. Behaviour Research And Therapy, 33(8), 897-902. (view publisher’s citation)

Deep Dyve’s record has the publication date as being December 6, 1995 while the Medline record has it as November 1995. Here’s part of the field view from Medline that shows where DeepDyve’s date originated:

PMID- 7487849
DA  – 19951206
DCOM- 19951206
VI  – 33
IP  – 8
DP  – 1995 Nov
TI  – The value of possessions in compulsive hoarding: patterns of use and attachment.
PG  – 897-902
SO  – Behav Res Ther. 1995 Nov;33(8):897-902.

–Speaking of citations, where are they? No nicely formatted APA or AMA citations here.  Most of the elements you’ll need will be there, just check the date (see above), or run it through CrossRef to verify. There is also a “Download from publisher” link that should take you to the publisher or source.

–The adjustable document viewer can switch quickly into fullscreen mode and offers zoom control. The big buttons to navigate from page to page are nice and easy to hit.

The service is listed as being in beta so expect kinks along the way.  Will be interested to see how it develops.

Looking for statistics, charts, or maps on H1N1 or seasonal influenza?  Here are three sources to get you started:

Centers for Disease Control: Flu Activity & Surveillance

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/fluactivity.htm

Includes several charts and statistical tables including

• weekly and cumulative data on the number of infected
• a breakdown of types of influenza
• number of hospitalizations and deaths
• pediatric deaths and more

Also includes a map of the United States showing geographic spread and degree of reported flu activity (includes both seasonal and H1N1). Updated weekly.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/WeeklyFluActivityMap.htm

American College Health Association

The American College Health Association collects data on the number influenza-like illnesses reported on colleges and universities in the United States. Counts are submitted on a voluntarily basis by colleges and universities and are not to be considered inclusive of all institutions of higher education.

Their epicurve chart displays weekly data from late August through present and shows the number of new cases and the “attack rate” per 10,000 people.

Google’s Flu Trends

Google’s Flu Trends map shows trends in flu search activity. Google reports that an increase in flu-related searches are “good indicators of flu activity.”  Activity is mapped geographically for the United States and can be compared to data from prior years.

News from Florida: Free open textbooks for everyone.

It was announced recently that a joint program called Orange Grove Texts Plus (OGT+) has been established between the University Press of Florida (UFP) and The Orange Grove, Florida’s Digital Repository, to provide free downloads of open access textbooks.  Downloads of electronic versions of books are available to anyone from the Orange Grove website.  Print copies can be ordered “for about half the cost of traditional textbooks” (see “For Students”).

Most of the news stories I saw on the announcement said this would be free for Florida students (they were Florida-based publications) but as open access web resources go, they are indeed available to those outside of Florida.  Currently, 126 books are available in the collection (here’s the list [PDF]) but they plan to include a “large selection” of titles from UFP’s 1600 title backlist.

You can browse the collection online at The Orange Grove site and choosing:

Browse Collections > Open Textbook Resources

Wired.com has a story telling how self published authors now have the ability to sell their works on Sony’s eBook store.  The article also points out that authors can also sell works on Amazon’s Kindle.  According to Sony’s partner, Smashwords, authors using the Sony store can expect “much higher royalties” with no charges for creating and uploading content.   In addition, in Sony’s world, there is no DRM.

Computer hardware manufacturer Asus, known to computer geeks for components like motherboards and videocards,  appears to be close to adding an ebook reader to their eee line of netbook and nettop computers.

On the surface, two notable achievements in this planned model make it standout from the rest of the ebook readers on the market:

1. It’s really book-like.  The eeeReader will have two color screens attached via hinges that allow it to open and close like a book.
2. The price.  Under $200 according to some reports.

It will be interesting to see what kind of ebook formats will be supported and which vendors owners of the devices will need to use to purchase and download content.

Read more at the Times Online and Wired.

Slashdot points to an article in The New York Times describing a disturbing practice of one pharmaceutical company hiring a ghostwriting firm to pen articles for publication in academic journals.  Of course it would look mighty suspicious to journal editors seeing a manuscript authored by a writing firm so the writing firm rounded up some “top physicians” who allowed their names to be cited as the authors.

Here is one of the articles included in the discussion:

Bachmann GA. (2005). Menopausal vasomotor symptoms: a review of causes, effects and evidence-based treatment options. The Journal Of Reproductive Medicine, 50(3), 155-165.

The released court documents include an email exchange between the ghostwriter and Bachmann where  Bachmann indicates that “It is the best article that I have come across on this topic.” Funny words for someone who is supposedly the author.

I wonder how long this kind of publishing has been going on and what kind of long term impact is has on other research.  Google Scholar currently shows that Bachmann’s article has been referenced 32 times. How many others are out there?

Source:

Like adam over on theshiftingstacks, I began wondering about how to apply the seventh edition of the MLA Handbook to sites like YouTube and Flickr that host user-generated resources.

While the seventh edition of the “MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers” does a good job of providing examples for information found on sites that publish their own content like Newsweek, CNN, and National Public Radio it does not provide any examples for sites like YouTube that host user-generated content.

I’ll give you that the number of educationally-relevant videos on sites like these is likely dwarfed by videos of cute kittens, but plenty of cite-worthy materials do exist.  And with a recent report indicating that Americans viewed over 16 billion online videos IN ONE MONTH, educators and librarians will likely see more and more of these showing up in works cited pages.

Example MLA Citations for Videos on YouTube

Here are a couple of example citations for YouTube videos based on my understanding of MLA’s guidelines found in section 5.6.2b.

Carnegie Mellon Univ. “Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” YouTube. N.p., 20 Dec. 2007. Web. 15 July 2009.

CCAC Library. “Ebscohost: An Overview.” YouTube. N.p., 29 Jan. 2009. Web. 15 July 2009.

In these examples, I chose to include the “N.p.” for “no publisher” based on this Lawrence Lessig citation example on page 186 of the manual:

The above refers to a post on Lessig’s blog. Even though he owns the site and publishes/posts blog articles, MLA does not consider the author and owner/operator as a “publisher” in this situation. Is that because the site is operated by an individual and not a corporate entity?

In applying this to the YouTube examples it seems inaccurate to cite YouTube as the “publisher or sponsor of the site” since YouTube has zero responsibility for the content of either video, hence the “N.p.” for no publisher.

Not listing a publisher in these citations will likely apply to most videos on user-generated sites like YouTube. One instance where this may not apply is for videos on user-generated sites that are posted by the site owner.  For example:

“YouTube Help Center Welcome Video.” YouTube. YouTube, 04 May 2007. Web. 15 July 2009.

I come to this conclusion based on this citation (page 186) for a recorded streaming news segment:

“Hourly News Summary.” National Public Radio. Natl. Public Radio, 20 July 2007. Web. 20 July 2007.

In this instance, NPR published an audio file on the its own site and was recognized by MLA as the publisher or sponsor of the site.

So it seems that:

1. MLA does NOT recognize as a “publisher or sponsor” an individual that owns a website and posts/publishes content (Lessig)
2. MLA DOES recognize as a “publisher or sponsor” an organization or corporate entity that owns a website and posts/publishes content (NPR)

How would you cite them?

A growing number of library database providers are making customizable search box widgets available to subscribers. Vendors like Ebsco, Gale, Proquest, and Facts on File all simplify the process of adding a search box to a website (or CMS like Blackboard) into a few steps  that result in “copy and paste” code.

I mentioned Ebsco’s tool previously.  Here are a few more vendors I came upon recently for my library:

• ProQuest Search Widget Creator

• Gale Widgets

• Facts on File

  - link may not work if you are not a current subscriber

• CredoReference

  - subscribers need to contact support for “HTML search box code”

Do you know of others?