Marie Fitzsimmons and Valerie Gross recently published an interesting article in Medical Reference Services Quarterly, A Review of the OvidSP Platform. (2008. v.27 (4) 394-405 DOI: 10.1080/02763860802368142)



Abstract:
As part of its mission to advance the technological capabilities of its products, Ovid introduced a redesign of its database platform in fall 2007. The platform redesign brought new features and enhancements to an already robust system. The transition between Ovid Gateway and the OvidSP platform was orchestrated seamlessly. With the OvidSP platform came innovative changes such as the incorporation of Natural Language Processing associated with the new Basic Search mode. Discussed are OvidSP features, advantages and disadvantages of the new platform, customizable settings, and future direction.

The article discusses OvidSP Advanced, OvidSP Basic (Natural Language Processing), and the advantages and disadvantages of the new platform. The article was received June 13, 2008, a pretty good publishing turn around time for an article in Haworth Press, however it is important to note that Ovid has done at least one update since the article was written.

Ovid has made some serious investment in the SP platform so I think we will see some interesting features and improvements to the platform in the future. One thing I hope they will consider doing sooner rather than later is to allow people to email citations in HTML. That is a crucial feature when dealing with research, full text articles and links. You cannot provide one stop shopping research services if you patrons have to open up two windows (your A-Z list of online journals and their email with Ovid citations) to find and download the full text of an article.

Labels: Medline Database, Ovid