In anticipation of renovation of Himmelfarb Library, journals are being moved. To obtain needed articles, please complete an online form.

If you have questions, please call (202) 994-2860 M-F, or email mlbdoc@gwumc.edu.

Researchers often want an objective way to identify the most influential journals in their field when looking to publish their work. We have written previously about a few online tools for comparing journals. Now Scopus, a powerful bibliographic and citation database, has released Journal Analyzer.

Journal Analyzer is a easy-to-use graphic tool for comparing up to 10 journals at a time. You choose the journals and Scopus gives you interactive graphs and charts starting in 1996 with the following information:

• Total citations - the number of citations received by that journal each year
• Articles published - the number of articles published in that journal each year
• Trend line - the number of citations divided by the number of articles published each year

To access the Journal Analyzer, click on the Analytics tab at the top of the page in Scopus. Give it a try next time you're looking to compare journal performance.

A review article on the Neglected Infections of Poverty in the United States of America was published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases recently. This article, written by GWUMC faculty member Dr. Peter Hotez, describes the hidden diseases of poverty - ascariasis in Appalachia and the South, dengue fever in the U.S.-Mexico border region, trichomoniasis in inner cities - which are "characterized by their high prevalence, chronic and disabling features, and disproportionate effect on the poor."

In this article, Dr. Hotez describes not only the specific diseases, but also how these conditions are part of a cycle of poverty with profound effects on child development, pregnancy outcomes, and worker productivity. To complement this article, Himmelfarb Library provides access to the following information resources:

• Atlas of tropical medicine and parasitology / Wallace Peters, Geoffrey Pasvol.
• Stacks RC961 .P46 2007
• Huppatz, C., & Durrheim, D. N. (2007). Control of neglected tropical diseases. New England Journal of Medicine, 357(23), 2407.
• Medical management of vulnerable and underserved patients : principles, practice, and populations / edited by Talmadge E. King, Jr., Margaret B. Wheeler.
• Stacks RA418.5 .P6 M437 2007

Image: Lange, D,. (1936). Migrant mother. [Online image]. Retrieved July 1, 2008 from http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/lange/aa_lange_power_2_e.html.

Today's edition of the Washington Post features an article entitled Fathering Autism which is about a father's experience caring for a daughter with autism. The father in the article is GWUMC's Dr. Peter Hotez who is the Walter G. Ross Professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and the principal scientist for the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative.

In the article, Dr. Hotez describes his daughter and his family's life as well as the suggestion that autism is caused by mercury or thimerosal, a mercury derivative, which used to be used as a preservative in vaccines. To learn more about this controversy, the following materials may be useful:

• Baker, J. P. (2008). Mercury, vaccines, and autism: One controversy, three histories. American Journal of Public Health, 98(2), 244-253.
• Doja, A., & Roberts, W. (2006). Immunizations and autism: A review of the literature. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 33(4), 341-346.
• Hughes, V. (2007). Mercury rising. Nature Medicine, 13(8), 896-897.

You can explore additional information on this topic in Himmelfarb Library's print and electronic collections.

Image: Finkenstaedt, M. (2008). Autism in a Doctor's Family. [Online image]. Retrieved July 1, 2008 from http://www.washingtonpost.com.

"Is that a psychedelic light show?"

This question begins a Washington Post article about a patient's experience with a detached retina. The patient and author of the piece, Bob Guldin, saw odd flashes of light and floaters before first seeking medical care. After seeing what appeared to be a curtain rising across his field of vision, he sought care at the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates where he was seen by Dr. Fadi Nasrallah. Diagnosed at 1 p.m., his surgery occurred at 6 p.m. and the patient was home by 10 p.m.

You can learn more about the patient's condition and treatment from Himmelfarb Library's online and print collections:

• Retinal Detachment in FirstConsult/MDConsult; Brief, evidence-based information including diagnosis, treatment, outcomes, and prevention.
• Gariano RF, Kim CH. Evaluation and management of suspected retinal detachment. Am Fam Physician 2004;69:1691-8
• Retina / editor-in-chief, Stephen J. Ryan. Stacks RE551 .R43 2006 V 1
  • Volume 3 Surgical Retina, Section 2 Retinal Reattachments: Surgical Principles and Technicques
  • This book is part of a three volume set of which one or all can be checked out of Himmelfarb Library.

Image from: A.D.A.M., Inc. (2008). Detached Retina. [Online image]. Retrieved June 4, 2008 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/9931.htm.

The Ebling Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin has created an incredible resource you can use to stay up-to-date with journal articles by specialty.

They have compiled the RSS feeds for the tables of contents of 2400+ biomedical and health sciences journals and grouped them by subject. Rather than looking up the feeds for individual journals and subscribing one-by-one, you can quickly subscribe to all the feeds in a subject area or just the feeds for the top journals in that subject.

For example, if you are interested in keeping up with journals that focus on emergency medicine you would:

• Go to that subject listing and select either top journals (10 journals from American Journal of Emergency Medicine to Shock) or all journals (44 journals from AACN Advanced Critical Care to World Journal of Emergency Surgery).
• Click on the "quick subscribe" link.
• Follow the instructions at the top of the page to save the OPML file.
• Log into your feed reader and go to "import" to import the OPML file.

Your feed reader will now contain a folder for the subject category and you will be automatically subscribed to the table of contents for all of those journals.

These feeds will contain the table of contents for new journal issues when they are published. To access the full-text of the articles you will need to go through Himmelfarb’s e-journals page and log-on if you are off-campus.

Click here to access the Ebling Library’s feed listing.

New to using RSS or have questions? Ask us.

There’s an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the frequency with which altered images appear in scientific journals. The article focuses on images from one young researcher’s articles. When one journal found that submitted images had been altered, an inquiry was begun which led to an Office of Research Integrity investigation and to retractions of previously published articles. The event had serious consequences for the researcher who resigned from her position and will be ineligible for grants from the U.S. government for five years.

The article discusses the ease of altering images due to their availability in digital format, and also that the alterations are not necessarily intended to be duplicitous. Some researchers view alterations as methods to clarify the data, whereas publishers regard alterations as corruptions of the original data which can lead to misrepresentations or misinterpretations of the research. Journal publishers have started using a variety of methods to try to protect themselves from publishing altered images including random checks of submitted images, thorough examinations of images, and the establishment of image guidelines.

If you’re interested in reading more on this issue, the following resources may be useful:

• Couzin, J. (2006). Don't pretty up that picture just yet. Science, 314(5807), 1866-1868.
• Nature’s Guide for Digital Images
• American Society for Microbiology’s Instructions for Authors on Image Manipulation
• American Association for Cancer Research’s Publications Policies includes sections on Image Acquisition and Analysis, Image Manipulation, Image Composites, as well as specific instructions on Electrophoretic Gels and Blots and Microscopy.

Image Citation: Schuller, S. (2007). How E. coli causes diarrhoea. [Online image]. Retrieved May 30, 2008 from http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/. Note: use of this image should not suggest that it has been altered.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper devoted to the news of academia, is now available on Himmelfarb's E-journals page. Take advantage of the Chronicle Online either on the E-Journals page, or register online to have it conveniently delivered to your email every morning.

To sign up for the daily email service, point your browser to: https://chronicle.com/services/create_account You will be asked to create a username and password, and to enter your email address. Next, select which daily messages you would like delivered, and click "create new account" to finish registration for this service. Just remember that if you are off-campus when you receive these emails from the Chronicle, you will need to login to the VPN/GWireless system to access the full-text.

If you have any questions about the new online access to the Chronicle, or need assistance signing up for the daily email service, call Betsy Appleton at 202-994-9756, or email her at mlbeaa@gwumc.edu.

Scopus and ScienceDirect can now be used with a social bookmarking service, 2collab.com, allowing you to bookmark and comment on specific articles. Your bookmarks and comments can be kept private, or can be shared with other individuals or with specific groups.

How does it work?

Each article in Scopus and ScienceDirect links to the 2collab.com website. Click on the link to bookmark the article and/or comment on it. You can set your preferences to specify which groups (if any) you join, and who else (specific groups or general public) can see your bookmarks and citations.

To get started with, follow these simple steps:

1. Create a personal account on 2collab.com.
2. Click on the bookmarking icon by articles in Scopus or ScienceDirect.
   
3. Login to your 2collab.com account (if necessary).
4. Select your preferences regarding if you would like to share the article with others (e.g. make public) and which groups (if any) you would like to share.

Why use social bookmarking or 2collab.com?

While you can use 2collab.com to simply keep track of articles that interest you, its greater strength is as a collaborative tool that allows you to share and comment on research that is useful to you and your colleagues, and to learn about other research articles from similarly interested individuals. 2collab.com allows you to create and join interest groups, to learn about articles that were interesting to others in your field, and to share your comments and read comments from others.

GW's Sara Rosenbaum has authored an article which appears in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The article focuses on the politics and policy surrounding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and is entitled The Proxy War — SCHIP and the Government's Role in Health Care Reform.

Professor Rosenbaum is Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy.