Library icons in PubMed's AbstractPlus display

The NLM Technical Bulletin has a brief article announcing that PubMed's AbstractPlus display has been modified -- now, one library-specific icon now appears closer to the top of the page, right above the Related Articles links.

The icons in the AbstractPlus display are displayed in the following order of priority:
- the Library LinkOut full text icon
- the Library LinkOut print icon
- the Outside Tool icon

One icon appears at the top, with the others appearing toward the bottom after the article's abstract.

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."

AbstractPlus view in PubMed

Flags and Lollipops discusses a Greasemonkey script that adds TrackBack links within PubMed, designed to work with the AbstractPlus view.

I really like the AbstractPlus view (sample citation here) -- in a recent search that included mostly case reports, I found some useful citations that otherwise would have likely taken much more "looking" to find. It also has helped me make some connections with related concepts in the literature. (More on PubMed's Related Articles algorithm and the AbstractPlus view)

Also, if you haven't seen Postgenomic yet, it's definitely worth a look - front page notes it "collects data from hundreds of science blogs and then does useful and interesting things with it." It pulls together commentary on different topics, issues, and recently published papers.