Five (Plus) Web Resources You Should be Using Right Now

Being a scientific researcher has gotten much easier than it was 15 years ago.   Literature searches can be performed online, and many times full text for articles retrieved from these searches is also readily available.   Electronic database searching has streamlined research and made writing the Background and Introduction sections of manuscripts much easier.  Here are some more tools that will help reduce the time you spend on writing, searching the literature and finding methods.   They’re all free, too.

Search & Peer Publication Updates

If you perform certain literature searches on a regular basis in your specialty, you should be using automatic searches to do this for you.  Most of the major scientific databases have features that allow you to set the terms of a search and have your results sent to you via e-mail monthly, weekly or even daily if you wish.  In PubMed, you can save searches by using MyNCBI.  I have weekly search updates for all publications from our faculty at our medical school, and monthly searches for protein-protein interaction papers.

There are a number of Web applications that allow you to develop and explore your professional connections with other researchers.   LinkedIn is good for job hunting and resume dispersal.  ResearchGate has means by which researchers can share results, even when those results are not significant enough to publish.  My favorite scientific networking site is BioMed Experts, a free feature developed by the Collexis team.  BioMed Experts will send you notifications every time a member in your publication circle of co-authors publishes a new paper.  It’s a great way to keep up with the work of co-authors who may be geographically distant from you.

Citation Management with Zotero

There is absolutely no reason why anyone writing a research paper should still be manually constructing bibliographies.  Excellent software is available for citation management that will make construction of your manuscripts’ reference section a breeze.  Even if you can’t afford some of the licensed reference management packages on the market, you can still organize your citations with Zotero.  Zotero is a Mozilla Firefox browser add-on that allows you to manage citations and build bibliographies.  It also enables you to synch reference libraries across multiple computers and create shared libraries with colleagues.  Zotero works within your browser to export citations from PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science and PsychInfo.  Even if you have other reference management software such as RefMan or EndNote, Zotero will integrate citations into these libraries.

File Hosting and Synching Sites

If you work on two computers (one at home and one at your lab), you know it can be annoying trying to keep the current version of a manuscript on each machine.  Sometimes you may forget which version of a paper was updated more recently.  Instead of using a flash drive to carry your papers back and forth to work, you might want to try using a free file-hosting site.  There are many good ones, and a comparison can be found at Wikipedia.  Many of these servers will allow you to maintain a free account with a decent amount of storage space.  I’m currently using Dropbox.  I love the fact that I can work on a manuscript at home, then go to work and have the site automatically update the paper on my work computer.   Dropbox accounts are hosted on their server and linked to your e-mail address.  Any file you put in your Dropbox folder on each computer will be updated to the most current version when your computer is turned on and connected to the Web.  You can also create shared folders with other Dropbox users and you can get extra storage space for recruiting new users to the site.

Electronic Protocols

It used to be difficult to find protocols for new methods and even more difficult to find protocols for more old-fashioned techniques such as cell stains and fixatives.  Now there are a number of protocols available on the Web and collected at a number of free sites.  My favorite site for visual lab methods is BenchFly.  (That’s not a surprise, is it?)  The site has made its protocols easy to find by creating categories (instruments, chemical techniques, DNA/RNA-related, etc.).   I like the fact that very short, seemingly basic techniques are featured alongside more complicated methods.  I was mesmerized by a video demonstration for pulling capillary tubes, recent winner of a BenchFly contest.  BenchFly also has a useful Products section where users can search for reagents and other lab products, plus a lot of fun features such as user polls and a protocol for making an Old Fashioned.

Bioinformatics Hubs

Most researchers at some point find themselves needing to find a protein or RNA sequence, or to find tools for calculating oligo properties, sequence alignment or structure viewing.  While the obvious choice is to start searches at the NCBI or EBI websites, there are two other tools that I rely on heavily to find just the right bioinformatic database or resource.   The first is University of Pittsburgh’s Health Sciences Library System’s Online Bioinformatics Resources Collection (OBRC).  This collection includes over 2000 resources, including those featured in the Nucleic Acids Resources databases and web servers issues.  Search results are clustered by category making them easier to sort through.

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Pamela Shaw received her Bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Oberlin College and worked as a neuroanatomy & histology lab tech for many years at Loyola University and Northwestern University.  Upon completion of her Master’s degree in Library & Information Sciences from University of Illinois, she was hired as Biosciences Librarian at the Galter Health Sciences Library at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.  She was awarded a National Library of Medicine Informationist Fellowship and is using it to complete a second Master’s degree in Computational Biology & Bioinformatics at Northwestern University.

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