PubMed and LinkOut
While I am a die hard Ovid Medline user, I use PubMed as well. I use PubMed and Ovid just like my cars. I know how to drive a stick shift and automatic and I choose which I want to drive depending on my mood and type of trip (weather, distance, rush hour, fuel economy, etc.) So while I choose to use Ovid Medline for some things, I am also quick to jump on PubMed for other things.
Yesterday I took "Making PubMed Work for You " CE class taught by Holly Burt. It was a great class for to refreshing my PubMed skills re-familiarizing myself with My NCBI.
One of the tips I learned was how to use My NCBI's alert service to send TOC alerts to my users. The only thing I could not figure out was how to preserve the LinkOut links so that when the email comes to my users they can easily and quickly click on the link to get the article.
While working on this I noticed a bizarre problem with my institution's LinkOut. Some of my journals that I correctly set up in LinkOut are not displaying the online full text icon when I search for articles.
For example:
New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA are set up in my LinkOut holdings to display the online full text icon. My LinkOut Utility shows both journals 1998-2005 through Ovid, and 2006-present through Highwire Press. However, when I do a search (using our institution's PubMed URL) I only get the online full text icon for JAMA articles NOT NEJM articles.
At first I thought this might be a problem with NEJM providing information to PubMed. To check this I did the exact same search using another library's PubMed URL. Guess what, their online full text icon shows up both on NEJM and JAMA.
Now why does it not do display the icon for my institution. I double checked my settings in LinkOut Utility and there is no problem they should be displaying the icon for those journals from 1998-present. Both journals have the exact same set up, yet only one displays the online full text icon. That is when I discovered this is more than just a problem with NEJM, some of my other journals have this problem. For some reason some of my journals display the online full text icon, and others do not. Very frustrating.
I sent an email to LinkOut customer service, but their response was less than helpful and just as frustrating.
(LinkOut customer service email)
Please see:
Why are there no full-text links for this journal?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/doc/faqlib_notlinked.shtml
For each journal, you can check LinkOut available providers at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/journals/jourlists.cgi?
Thank you for your interest in NLM products and services.
Uh, guys you didn't really read my help email. The first URL you provide talks about the provider not participating in LinkOut which is NOT the case with NEJM. NEJM is a provider as shown on your list which your second URL provides.
While I am waiting to here back from LinkOut customer services, does anybody have any ideas as to why this is happening?
3 Comments:
I've had a couple of occasions when I sent a note to NLM/PubMed help, clearly identified myself as a medical librarian, and got back msgs that indicated they hadn't read my email at all, and were assuming I was Jane Taxpayer on the street.
Maybe sending a note to the tech coordinator at the RML would be faster?
NLM doesn't listen to or hear their users. They insist that the full text publisher icons HAVE to be an all or nothing proposition. There's no modification of icons within your institution's use of PubMed. You can't turn on or off the icons supplied by the publishers. Plus, they have the most godawful, clunky search terms ever devised. A little simplicity here? On the positive side, PubMed works well, is fast, is reliable, and has the most up to date citations. "Single Citation Matcher" is one of the best features on any database I've ever seen--we swear by it.
I had been told by LinkOut that some newer citations may not show institutional LinkOut icons until the records are complete. Apparently there was some part of the record that would allow LinkOut icons to be displayed. I've definitely noticed this with NEJM. I heard this a while ago (a year or more) though. So, I'm not sure if this is still the case.
Post a Comment
<< Home