Availability of Medical Literature Information

Abstract

The use and availability of scientific literature information have increased significantly with the increased availability of the Internet. Many researchers, however, findit difficult to keep track of what is available and available resources are not fully exploited. Publishers need to redefine their position when production and distributionof literature information, including peer reviewing, might as well be performed by the researchers them selves or their organizations. Using web-based information from distributors of medical literature information as well as knowledge from the available licenses negotiated in a consortium of thelarge Danish university libraries we investigated the availability of literature information for medical professionals. The Medline database and related databases including abstract information is freely available from the National Library of Medicine. New facilities are rapidlygrowing and include more than 20 additional databases searchable with the PubMed search engine and links to full text versions of more that 1200, mostly licensedjournals. The Medline database covers only some 10-20 % of all medical literature and searches in additional commercial databases such as: Embase, ScienceCitation Index, Chemical Abstracts, Biological Abstracts and PsychInfo may be required for more comprehensive searches.Presently free full-text literature information is available from only a few publishers. It is often difficult for researchers to know which resources are available andfrom where. The American PubMed Central (www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/) and European E-BioSci (See: www.embo.org/E_Biosci_proposal.html) seek toenhance the effectiveness in handling and distribution of literature information in medical and biological sciences. Ideally all medical literature information should be available for free for all researchers in a well-structured form via the Internet. Technology to deliver this goal isalready available. However, a difficult yet significant work needs to be done by researchers, librarians, university administrators, and publishers before we reach thisgoal.