Latest issues and the next release

Some of you may be wondering why we haven't been updating the blog lately to tell you when latest issues are available. Mainly it's because you've all cottoned on to the "HOT OFF THE PRESSES" section on the top right of the home page. But also it's because we've been putting most of our energy into preparing the next release. More about that soon!

Not at Harvard? Try www.pubget.com—or subscribe

We've noticed that an awful lot of people out there seem to be going to Pubget through our Harvard flavor, harvard.pubget.com. We're sure you've noticed that unless you have a Harvard PIN, you can't get Harvard's own holdings this way, just public-access PDFs. Visitors to harvard.pubget.com will notice you now get sent to a login screen. This is much nicer for folks who are actually at Harvard, since it's fewer clicks for them—Pubget is all about speed—but for everyone else, it must be pretty disappointing, because now you won't be able to get to any of your search results, not even the public ones.

Luckily, the solution is easy: if you're not at Harvard (or another subscribing institution), use www.pubget.com instead of harvard.pubget.com. When you do, you'll get all the access you were already getting—plus now you'll at least see the abstracts for papers that you don't have access to. Of course, if you're not at a subscribing institution but still want to search at Pubget speed, just tell your university or hospital or company to subscribe, and we'll set you up with your very own flavor of Pubget.

Blogging in Europe

Jens de Groot of Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, covered Pubget in his library biomedical sciences blog today. A few days ago, Blogue CISMeF, which covers medical sites (in French), covered us, too. We're glad they seem to like it! We've been getting more and more visits from the Benelux countries, and from Europe more generally, as well as inquiries about subscribing (Pubget gives you open-access PDFs for free, and "Pubgets" your own subscription library holdings when you subscribe to Pubget). Keep them both coming!

Endnote and a few other tweaks

The past few days have seen a few tweaks to Pubget that we wanted to tell you about.

First, the abstract view is now a little more functional. (This is something you'll see a lot if your institution doesn't subscribe to Pubget yet.) Clicking on the author now does a search for that author. And we've added a link to search for related articles. We also added a link to the YouTube video, so you can see how Pubget works if you get your institution supported.

Second, the "retry" button in the top-right corner is now a little easier to see and use. You click this if your PDF doesn't show but you think it should. If that doesn't work, click "still a problem?" and tell us what went wrong; we'll do our best to help. Oh, and please leave an email, or else we can't write you back.

Third, you can now download citations for any or all of your keepers folders. This is handy for sending a lot of citations to Endnote or BibTeX all at once. You could always download citations for individual results using the little down-arrow on the results listing (and still can). But now you can go to your keepers and click "get citations" and Pubget will download whatever folder you're in to a .ris file on your computer, which you can import into Endnote or drag-and-drop to Bibdesk.

Fourth, it's now a little easier for you to tell when your browser's finished loading each result; results go from light blue to black when they've loaded. We did this to save you from clicking on results before they load.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think. And check back here often; we've got a couple of other things in the works we think you might like.

Pubget, meet iPhone

Pubget makes searching fast. Now, the iPhone is making Pubget mobile. Don't get us wrong—with Pubget you've always been able to get to your favorite PDFs from any computer. What's new is, now you don't even need the computer.

If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, we'd really love to hear about your experiences with Pubget mobile. Do you check literature on rounds at the hospital or in the call room? Are you leafing through latest issues in a park somewhere?

We've still got some tweaks to make, so you'll be hearing more about this soon. But since Apple's gone and featured us, we thought we ought to blog at least a bit about it now.

New NIH's policy: good news for Pubget users

As you may have heard by now, the National Institutes of Health instituted a new policy earlier this month that requires that any paper that was supported by NIH funding has to be available to the public for free within a year after publication. (For those who don't know, the NIH is the single biggest source of funding for biomedical research in the United States.)

For Pubget users, this is good news: it means you can get more PDFs. It is especially nice for users whose institutions don't have large library holdings, since it means they will now have access to more science than ever before.

So how do you get the new PDFs on Pubget? Easy—the same way you got PDFs on Pubget before. Just do a Pubget search. If the PDF's available, you'll see it (or else let us know). If not, you'll see the abstract and links, just like you've always seen for papers you don't have access to.

Still, remember that NIH-supported papers don't have to go public for a whole year. That means if you want to get the latest PDFs on Pubget, getting your institution supported is still your best bet (more on that later).

It's important not to dismiss the honest work that publishers put in in adding value to the science, but we've heard from a lot of people about this, and the consensus is folks are happy. They figure it was people's tax dollars that paid to do the science, so it's only fair for people to be able to read about it.

Pubget in the news: Davidrothman.net

David Rothman, who blogs about things medical, technological, and library-related, posted this story about Pubget, complete with a link to our first YouTube Pubget video. If you want to keep up to date on developments in medical search, check out his excellent blog!