Positive Linking

A Survival Guide on How to Keep Up-to-date With Pediatric Infectious Diseases Literature Using Internet Technology

Abstract

A large number of medical journals publish an increasing number of articles each year. Keeping up-to-date with pediatric literature seems therefore an almost impossible task. For clinicians and researchers, who all have long, busy and tightly scheduled working days, time to find relevant new publications is scarce. The internet now offers numerous tools and opportunities that can help sort through this wealth of information, making it possible to keep up-to-date with relevant literature. In this article, we describe some of the different tools on offer and provide a selection of links and websites that facilitate efficient information management.

Keeping up-to-date with medical literature is an almost impossible task. A large number of medical journals publish an increasing number of articles each year. Meanwhile, clinicians and researchers are confronted with busy and tightly scheduled working days and long working hours, leaving time to find relevant new publications ever more limited. The traditional practice of reading a print edition of a journal has almost vanished as now almost all journals are available and read online. In fact, with the wealth of electronic information available, finding, filtering and evaluating published evidence can easily take up the bulk of limited reading time. Fortunately, almost all journals now offer additional tools to select relevant literature. Electronic table of contents (eTOCs), auto-alerts, really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, podcasts, social networking services (including twitter and facebook) and apps have significantly changed the way information can be retrieved and shared.¹ These help doctors to shorten the time to find literature tailored to their personal interests and fields of practice. In addition, online “meta-journals” have become increasingly popular and accessible. Unfortunately, knowledge of these tools is not widely distributed nor systematically taught at medical schools or pediatric clinics. In the following, we will review a few of the potential aids in keeping up-to-date with published literature, enabling the reader to efficiently find information pertinent to their area of interest and thus allowing more time to actually read these articles in detail.

ELECTRONIC TABLE OF CONTENTS

Almost all of the most frequently cited and highly ranked journals publish eTOCs. To access this feature, a free-of-charge online subscription is usually required. Depending on how user-friendly the specific webpages are, this only takes a couple of minutes. Frequently there is a choice of format and additional features, such as alerts for early releases or continuous medical education. Once an eTOC request is set up, the TOC of the most recent issue will automatically be sent on publication date to a personal e-mail account, enabling browsing of titles and abstracts. In addition to subscription to an eTOC from an individual journal, there are a number of websites allowing the management of alerts from multiple journals. For example, http://www.jpeds.com/user/alerts/savetocalert (free of charge) allows you to choose eTOCs from a range of journals including Journal of Pediatrics, Current Pediatrics, Infectious Disease Clinics of North America, Journal of Infection, Paediatric Respiratory Reviews, Pediatric Clinics of North America, etc. Alternatively, many institutions have subscriptions to databases such as Web of Knowledge, Ovid or EBSCO, which also offer the possibility of subscribing to alerts from a large number of journals. Managing eTOCs for multiple journals from a single website is particularly useful to facilitate reevaluation of subscriptions. It is advisable to check eTOC subscriptions on a regular basis to enable unsubscribing from those which do not or no longer suit the purpose of the reader. Unrestricted subscription to eTOCs may result in a large number of alerts, which subsequently are not read.

RSS FEEDS AND PODCASTS

An RSS feed delivers information about new contents or updates from an information source such as a website. To be able to receive RSS feeds, an RSS reader or feedreader is needed. This reader may be a web-based application or, software installed on a personal computer, or built into a web-browser or e-mail program. For those unfamiliar with RSS feeds and the installation thereof, an online video entitled “RSS in plain English” provides an excellent illustrated approach to how RSS feeds work.² Most online medical information sources offer subscriptions to RSS feeds on their homepages. Subscription to an RSS feed is always free of charge, and the availability of the feature is easily identified by the presence of the typical orange icon

. RSS feeds can also be used as an alternative to e-mail alerts for eTOCs or saved searches on MEDLINE/PubMed (see below). They are also useful to keep up-to-date with the most recent podcasts from medical journals. Podcasts (the word is a portmanteau from iPod and broadcasting) are downloadable audio or video files, which can be useful sources of up-to-date information. A number of influential journals and webpages offer this service. Here is a small personal selection of useful links to podcasts. For example, some journals provide an audio summary of the most recent edition: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/multimedia.aspx, http://www.nejm.org/multimedia/audio-summary, and http://www.thelancet.com/multimedia. Other websites publish podcasts with short reviews of topics or recent publications: http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/.

In addition, societies such as the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases or the Infectious Disease Society of America make scientific presentations available as video podcasts for members or conference attendees.

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND APPS

Social networking sites including twitter and facebook are web-based services that allow individuals to share information with a defined list of other users. Since their introduction in the late 90s, these sites have become rapidly popular among a large number of individuals, particularly teenagers and young adults. More recently social networking sites have also attracted the attention of the academic community. Quite a number of respected journals including NEJM, BMJ, The Lancet and the Cochrane Collaboration now have a twitter and/or facebook presence that can be followed by interested individuals. After subscription to this feature, short messages alert followers of a new published article or other news. Feeds by social networking sites are often limited to a length of less than 200 characters. Some users find the brevity of these messages helpful in terms of keeping the influx of electronic information to a minimum. However, the choice of which articles are selected to be sent on as a message seems to be at the discretion of the editorial team and tools available to select messages that only contain information on a specific topic of interest are lacking. Mobile applications or apps are programs that can be downloaded to mobile devices. With smartphones rapidly changing how, when and where people access information, a number of journals now offer apps from which the current and sometimes also past issues can be viewed. Apps from open access journals, for example, PLoS Medicine, can be used to read the full text articles. In addition, some apps give you access to abstracts from several journals. For example, “The medical reader” app allows the reading of abstracts from NEJM, JAMA and The Lancet.

META-JOURNALS

Another source of information are meta-journals, which collect and summarize research articles and guidelines from a number of medical journals. Concise summaries, often together with a short commentary, are accessible online or through an e-mail alert. Some of the features of meta-journals are subject to a subscription fee. Most meta-journals also offer RSS feeds. A personal selection of helpful and interesting meta-journals is presented in Table 1.

TABLE 1: Meta-journals

INDIVIDUALIZED INFECTIOUS DISEASES ALERTS

There are a number of tools enabling individualized alerts using web-based tools. For example, databases such as MEDLINE/PubMed, Web of Knowledge or Ovid offer the possibility to save performed searches. In addition, these saved searches feature options to automatically receive an alert (through e-mail, RSS feeds and other channels) once a new article is published which fits the search criteria. These services are generally free of charge but in some instances need subscription to the database in the first place (eg, for Web of Knowledge or Ovid).

CONCLUSIONS

Keeping up-to-date in pediatric infectious diseases remains challenging to all clinicians and researchers, as time to read new medical literature is limited. Novel web-based technologies offer the opportunity to create personalized alerts that automatically deliver the requested information. Subscription to these automated alerts needs to be exercised with caution, and regular reevaluation is important to prevent receiving an unmanageable number of alerts. The judicious use of internet technology makes it possible to keep up-to-date in pediatric literature in a systematic and efficient way. The development in this field is rapid, and novel tools and technology are evolving continuously, which makes it important to regularly reevaluate the techniques we use.