Friday, October 06, 2006

Pending changes to PubMed AbstractPlus display

In the Technical Bulletin today, NLM announced that by March 2007, one library-specific full-text icon will be allowed at the top of the PubMed AbstractPlus display (where currently only the PubMed Central and publisher icons appear), rather than only at the end by the PMID - indicates that this is one of the main concerns voiced by librarians. The announcement notes:

"Libraries will be limited to one icon at the top and it must be no larger than 100 pixels high by 25 pixels wide. Other icons will continue to display near the PMID. We will supply more information closer to the time of the change and NCBI will send out an announcement on the Library LinkOut Announcements listserv that will provide details and instructions."
As I noted in a previous post, I really like the AbstractPlus feature, and the announcement also provides some data about how the display format is being used -- "Since the introduction of AbstractPlus, clicks on related links have increased 13%. Twenty-three percent of the time users view the AbstractPlus display, they click on one of the first five related articles links."

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4 Comments:

At 4:41 PM, Blogger Rachel said...

Wonder what this will mean for our icons when we normally have two (one indicating print and one indicating online access)?

 
At 5:01 PM, Blogger Becky said...

I guess it'll mean that we'll still end up with links in two different places - the fulltext icon toward the top, and the print icon down at the bottom by the PubMed ID. Not ideal, but better than having both at the top. Maybe they want to avoid having the top too "cluttered", which might detract from the links to related articles?

 
At 10:52 AM, Blogger Rachel said...

Would you do a post on how the related articles are generated and how relevant they actually are? I'd be interested in your thoughts on the benefits and workings of that feature.

 
At 11:50 AM, Blogger Becky said...

Great idea, will work up a post.

 

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