Dear Colleague

Welcome to the first issue of Biomed/Life Sciences News for 2007. Many new enhancements have been made to content in this subject area on Dialog and DataStar: new BIOSIS® archive, new features in EMBASE®, eLinks and thesauri in CAB Abstracts and much more.

To keep you up to date with biomed and life sciences topics in 2007, you'll be hearing about reloads of databases as they occur, enhancements and new content, search techniques, industry news and other Thomson Scientific information that will help you expand your biomed/life sciences knowledge. Stay tuned!

Rosmarie Matter, Senior Manager
Publisher Management

New BIOSIS Archive back to 1926

An archive of approximately 1.8 million records of BIOSIS life sciences data covering the period 1926 to 1968 was added to Dialog and DataStar, effective March 1. File 5 on Dialog and BIZZ on DataStar contain data from 1926 to the present. A stand-alone file (File 552) covering just 1926 to 1968 was added to Dialog. In addition, a second new file—File 525/BIXX —contains data from 1969 to the present.

The BIOSIS database on Dialog and DataStar is now divided into four files, each covering a different date range. To summarize, the BIOSIS files on Dialog and DataStar are as follows:

Note: For those customers with site licenses to BIOSIS, use File 525 on Dialog, BIXX on DataStar, for the same coverage you currently have.

Elsevier Science Introduces New Bibliographic Data Elements

Elsevier has introduced some new publication types and associated features in EMBASE® (File 72, 73/EMED, EMZZ), Elsevier Biobase (File 71/ELBI) and EMCare (File 45/EMCA). These are:

• Two new publication types: Trade Journal and Proceeding in EMBASE. Currently these appear only in Biobase and EMCare.
• Issue Title (TI) for journal issues that have their own distinct title and for individual book titles in records derived from individual Book Series issues
• Names of editors of specific issues
• ISBNs of journals that are book series. Both 10- and 13-digit ISBNs (BN=) are provided, where available.

For more information about the changes, check the Bluesheet or the Datasheet or the BASE database.

EMCare and British Nursing Index for Your Nursing and Healthcare Needs on DataStar

For your nursing and healthcare information needs, consider EMCare® (EMCA) and British Nursing Index (BNID), which cover all specialties of nursing. View the table which compares coverage in these Nursing resources with Cinahl®. Effective March 31, 2007, Cinahl will be available only to annual-license subscribers. Contact your account representative or the Knowledge Center for information on how to obtain a license.

International in scope, EMCare is very current with articles online and indexed in one month or less. About two-thirds of the journals from Cinahl are included in EMCare. British Nursing Index, with annotated titles, informative abstracts and eLinks to fulltext, focuses specifically on specialist British nursing journals and medical, health management and allied health fields relevant to U.K. nurses and midwives. A representative number of non-U.K. specialist journals are also covered.

For help setting up your Alerts in EMCare and British Nursing Index, contact the Alerts Bureau to assist you.

Clinical Trial Numbers Added to EMBASE and EMCare

From January 1, 2007, EMBASE® (File 72, 73/EMED, EMZZ) and EMCare® (File 45/EMCA) record Clinical Trial numbers from two separate sources (see below) if they appear in the fulltext of the original article. The number has its own field on Dialog (TL; expand TL=); in DataStar the numbers are displayed at the end of the Abstract.

Background: The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has been arguing for a proper registration of all clinical trials. During the clinical research phases of drug development, pharmaceutical companies organize clinical trials for the drugs that they are developing. This way it is always possible to look up how many trials were set up for a drug and to monitor if the results of all trials have been reported on. The pharmaceutical industry associations worldwide have agreed with this initiative and have adopted the ICMJE recommendations.

There are currently two such databases that meet all ICMJE criteria, one based in the U.S. and one in the U.K.

1. Clinicaltrials.gov, a database set up and run by the NIH/NLM
2. International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number Register

Elsevier is planning to add a third source of Clinical Trial numbers from March 1, 2007: EudraCT. The European Clinical Trials Directive (Directive 2001/20/EC) requires that all clinical trials on medicinal products for human use are registered in a European database. Clinical trials carried out in member states of the European Union are registered in the EudraCT database.

Call for Contributors

Participate in knowledge sharing with your colleagues interested in topics related to biomedicine and life sciences. Share your story suggestions with us at support.dialog.com/enewsletters/contribute/.