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