Journal Monitor

The four years I’ve worked at DrugScope have been distinguished by a fantastic growth in the amount of information that’s out there. Twenty years ago, it may have been possible for our predecessor, the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence to collect every evidence-based publication in the English language, but today, when any organisation or individual can “publish” almost immediately on the Internet, keeping up-to-date is a more daunting task.

Even traditional media, like peer-reviewed journals, push out copy more quickly – many make articles available “online ahead of print”, usually charging a premium for early access. One of the most common requests I’ve received from researchers over the last four years has been for a journal alerting service, to let them know what’s new as soon as it comes out.

At last, technology has caught up with this need, and the result is our brand new Journal Monitor, available here.

When journal publishers publish new content, it will show up in our “Journal Headlines”. Journals not covered by their publishers in this way are covered by PubMed, and Jill and I are picking up individual articles from non-drug publications.

Blog Directory

Using the same technology as the Journal Monitor service, I’ve also ceated a Blog Directory that monitors the growing number of blogs in the sector.

When the blogs publish new content,  headlines appear in the “Latest blog headlines” box. All links lead back to the original posts, and a major aim of this service is to drive traffic to the individual blogs created and written by the sector’s organisations and individuals. Its other aim is to help people keep up-to-date.

The need for such an aggregator was highlighted in July, when Daily Dose, the largest email update service, decided that it would no longer carry links to blogs.

Commentary, News & References

A “blog” is just a format – each has its own focus and raison d’etre, its own editorial style. Just because you like one blog doesn’t mean you like every blog. There are also other frequently updated sites that are not blogs. For those reasons, I’ve created three other  monitoring services, so that if you’re interested in three specific topics, you can monitor those areas.

The News service picks up headlines from a variety of sources. The Commentary service highlights those blogs that, like  the Druglink Blog, provide comment and opinion. Finally, the References service monitors blogs and other websites that, like DrugData Update, focus on new reports and publications.

All three of these services can be accessed here.

Tips and Tricks

As well as accessing these services on their web pages, those of you who use newsreaders, like Bloglines or Google Reader, can sign up to have the information from them delivered to your desktop.

If you’re not part of the Web 2.0 revolution yet, there’s never been a better time to take 5 minutes to keep up-to-date. Basic introduction here.

Anne Welsh
Information Officer