News from January, 2009

I recently came across two interesting tools that utilize text similarity searches of Medline to identify:

• experts on the topic to review an article or grant
• collaborators with similar interests
• appropriate journals in which to publish
• articles for citation

The premise behind using a text similarity search algorithm is that most individuals do not know how to effectively and efficiently use the search tools provided by NCBI's PubMed. A literature search engine that takes natural text as input and then delivers results with high precision and recall based on similarity search algorithms has the potential to be more useful that simple keyword based searches.

Have a peak at these two resources and post your comments on whether you find them useful.

JANE- Journal/Author Name Estimator: http://www.biosemantics.org/jane/index.php

ETBlast: http://invention.swmed.edu/etblast/etblast.shtml