Tables of Contents in your feed reader

Organization Monkey alerts us to ticTOCs Journal Tables of Contents Service, which promises an easy way to scan tables of contents from your choice of over 11,000 scholarly journals from 414 publishers.  According to the ticTOC site:

The ticTOCs Journal Tables of Contents service makes it easy for academics, researchers, students and anyone else to keep up-to-date with newly published scholarly material by enabling them to find, display, store, combine and reuse thousands of journal tables of contents from multiple publishers. With ticTOCs, it only takes a or two to keep up to date.

Available journals may be searched by title words, publisher or subject; a sample title search for “medicine” returned 270 items.

Users may view the tables of contents in a free ticTOC MyTOCs account or may export their selections to a feed reader.

The ticTOCs Consortium includes the University of Liverpool Library (lead), Heriot-Watt University, CrossRef, ProQuest, Emerald, RefWorks, MIMAS, Cranfield University, Institute of Physics, SAGE Publishers, Inderscience Publishers, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Open J-Gate, and Intute, and is funded under the JISC Users & Innovation program.

Recent Developments in Open Access Publishing

U.K. scientist Cameron Neylon writes, at his Science in the Open blog, that good communication is just good science. He makes the case that open access furthers scientific discourse by reducing the barriers in accessing the scientific record for review, criticism, and discussion.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, meanwhile, legislation has been introduced to curtail or eliminate the NIH policy requiring that federally funded research articles be submitted for publication in PubMed Central after a year’s embargo.  John Timmer at Ars Technica posts that “Congress’s copyright fight puts open access science in peril.”  Timmer reports that aggressive lobbying efforts may have paid off in getting this bill introduced, and summarizes testimony for and against the continuation of the open access policy.

via Hardin Scholarly Communication News

On another note, Scientific American reports: Open access publisher Biomed Central sold to Springer.  Check out the details at BioMed Central’s Springer Acquisition FAQ.

Misquoting the literature

An interesting study in the Journal of Hand Surgery examines whether authors citing a 1986 study have accurately represented the findings reported in this classic article. This points up the importance of reviewing original studies, when practicing evidence-based medicine, rather than relying on later articles to accurately interpret them.

From the abstract:

PURPOSE: Novel clinical studies often define how we practice hand surgery. Proper referencing of these articles is therefore critical. Since the publication of Knirk and Jupiter’s 1986 study analyzing intra-articular distal radius fractures in young adults, citations of this article have appeared to be inconsistent in the biomedical literature. … RESULTS: Of the 154 articles examined, 63 have at least 1 inaccurate reference of the Knirk and Jupiter article. In general, articles referencing Knirk and Jupiter’s classification system, protocol, or tables are accurate (59 of 63), whereas a majority of the articles addressing the value of 2 mm of articular incongruity after a distal radius fracture are inaccurate (43 of 57).

Porrino JA Jr, Tan V, Daluiski A. Misquotation of a commonly referenced hand surgery study. J Hand Surg [Am]. 2008 Jan;33(1):2-7. PMID: 18261657

Associated editorial:
Meals RA. Misquoting classic orthopaedic literature. J Hand Surg [Am]. 2008 Jan;33(1):8. PMID: 18261658

Thomson Scientific responds…

Thomson Scientific has posted its response to the Journal of Cell Biology editorial, Show me the Data, which we wrote about in December (ISI Impact Factors).

Thomson Scientific corrects inaccuracies in editorial contends that the JCB editorial is misleading and inaccurate, and responds point-by-point to several statements made in that article.

In a press release, Thomson Scientific also announced the creation of a journal citation forum to promote discussion of citation-based research evaluation. Read the press release: Thomson Scientific launches Journal Citation Forum dedicated to discussion about citation-based research evaluation.

From the University of Melbourne Library Intelligencer