Over the next few weeks, we will be exploring the functionality available to users at article-level across our journal websites. We will be concentrating in this first post on the ‘services’ available in the ‘content box’, which is located on the right-hand side of all articles (see screenshot below).

Email this link to a friend

Fairly self-explanatory, clicking this link on a particular article will allow users to email a link to said article to a friend/colleague/acquaintance with the following message:

“I thought you might be interested in the article I found in the publication: Journal X”

Alert me when this article is cited

Clicking on this link will allow users to enter their email address and then be sent an email when the article in question is cited by another journal on the HighWire platform. For further information on available email alerts, please refer to this previous post which covers the options in detail.

Alert me if a correction/eletter is posted

These links provide users with the option to sign up for email alerts whenever a correction or eletter is posted to a particular article.

Similar articles in this journal

HighWire uses Semio technology to tag and group articles by topic and subtopic enabling users to browse to content and find articles they may not have using a standard search.

Add article to my folder

‘My Folders’ is a personalised online filing system for registered users. Providing quick access to articles that you have viewed previously, My Searches also allows you to save and re-use searches. Articles can be re-organised at any time, according to your needs. Save them to more than one folder using the copy function.

Download to citation manager

We provide a simple and direct method of acquiring article citations in the Medlars format compatible with import into personal bibliographic management software such as RefWorks, EndNote, Reference Manager, or ProCite.

Request permissions

Any one other than the author of a particular paper who wants to reproduce a BMJ article needs to ask our permission. We are usually happy to give permission, though in many cases we will charge a fee. Permission should be sought by following the link [Request permissions] that appears in the right handle panel on every article, or under its entry in a table of contents. This will take you to the Rightslink electronic request system.

Next week: Responses, Google Scholar and PubMed

We covered the basics of Twitter and its potential value in a previous post but now it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty; how do you Tweet and what are those @ symbols all about?

Do I need special software to Tweet?

All you need to use Twitter is an internet connection or a mobile phone. Once you’ve signed in, type your first 140 character update into the web box at the top of your page (underneath ‘What’s happening?’).

What exactly does ‘following’ somebody on Twitter mean?

Following another person simply means subscribing to their Twitter updates. When you follow someone, every time they post a new message, it will appear on your Twitter home page.

How can I check who I’m following?

After you select the follow button on a person’s profile, you will start following them. The follow button changes to a green check mark next to the word “Following” with a button on the right to remove a person if you want to.

How can I see who is following me?

Twitter sends out email alerts when a new user starts to follow you. It’s possible to alter your email preferences at any time. The followers link on your profile page or home page’s sidebar will also tell you how many followers you have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91zurrk69_w

This video tutorial demonstrates the major aspects of Twitter’s functionality

What are @Replies?

An @reply is a public message sent from one person to another, distinguished from normal updates by the @username prefix. If a message begins with @username, it is automatically collected as a reply. Reply publicly to any update on Twitter by using the @username rule. Following is not necessary to reply to somebody, and all of your replies are visible in the @username tab in your home page sidebar. (Tweets with @username elsewhere in the tweet are also collected in your sidebar tab; tweets starting with @username are replies, and tweets with @username elsewhere are defined as ‘mentions’.)

Can tweets be edited once posted?

Once it’s out there, you can’t edit it. You can, however, delete an update by clicking the bin icon on the right-hand side of the update.

What does RT, or retweet, mean?

RT is short for retweet, and indicates a re-posting of somebody else’s tweet. This isn’t an official Twitter command or feature, but people add RT somewhere in a tweet to indicate that part of their tweet includes something they’re re-posting from another person’s tweet, often with a comment of their own.

What do the stars at the end of updates mean?

The star is a way for you to mark an update as favourite. People can view your favourites, and you theirs, by clicking on the Favourites link in the profile page.

Still have unanswered questions?

Check out the official Twitter Help Center or help resources for more information or feel free to contact me with your queries (cbower@bmjgroup.com).

To build interest in the future launch of BMJ Open, a new open access journal for general medical research, a blog has been created and linked with various Web 2.0 technologies. Not only does the new journal have a blog, Twitter account and Facebook fan page, but all these sites are interconnected to create a seamless and consistent experience for our users. Please show your support by following BMJ_Open on Twitter or liking BMJ Open on Facebook.

What is BMJ Open?

Using a continuous publication model the journal will provide rapid publication for research from any medical discipline or therapeutic area. Not only will the journal publish traditional full research reports, including small or low-impact studies, but we intend to shed light on all stages of the research process by publishing study protocols, pilot studies and pre-protocols. The journal will also place great emphasis on the importance of data sharing; raw data will be linked to at its repository or hosted online as supplementary material wherever possible. As in its sister journal, the BMJ, all research will immediately be open access upon publication.

This emphasis on transparency will continue with research protocols and reviewers’ comments being published alongside final papers. Authors will need to provide clear statements of their studies’ strengths and limitations. Peer review will be open, and the criteria for acceptance will be that the research was conducted in a transparent and ethical way. Naturally, all articles will need to comply with the BMJ Group’s high standards of research and publication ethics.

Authors will be asked to pay article-processing charges on acceptance, although waivers will be available on request. The ability to pay will not influence editorial decisions; payment requests will be made on acceptance.

Watch for updates on the BMJ Open blog (or via Twitter/Facebook) to track the new journal’s progress – and for advance information on how to submit your research. Meanwhile, for more information you can contact the editorial office at editorial.bmjopen@bmjgroup.com.

Disqus, pronounced “discuss”, is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. As well as being used by The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and CNN, we have now installed Disqus on all BMJ blogs (including this one!). The Disqus comment system can be plugged into any website, blog, or application. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.

How does it work?

Disqus offers great opportunities for both bloggers and readers/commenters alike in that it expands the available functionality far above and beyond the traditional text-based commenting structures normally associated with blogs.

This includes the option to link to personal profiles elsewhere on the web, connect with friends and colleagues and ultimately retain far greater ownership over your comments as everything said is aggregated against a profile on the Disqus website. For a basic introduction to the service, have a look at the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB1drTFhUE8

Network and community formation

One of the key outcomes of this framework is the opportunity for network development at both the blog level and the user level. This is because blogs and users are equally represented in the framework and can thus become nodes in their own right.

As part of the set-up process, each blog is given its own community area on the Disqus website. This blog’s forum is at the following location: http://disqus.com/comments/moderate/bmjwebdevblog/. Not only does this enable users to quickly view and respond to comments (which are tied back into the blog), the community area also displays statistical information regarding Top Commenters and Popular Threads. The increased focus on the individual in this framework means that readers are able to connect with one another – thus facilitating the development of networks and communities within and across blogs and sites. Effectively the users start to become hubs for the discussion as much as sites are.

Synchronised comments

Of critical significance for WordPress users is the fact that Disqus synchronises comments between your WordPress blog and the Disqus site. In the past, when you replaced the native WordPress commenting framework with Disqus, all comments were stored on the Disqus website and therefore carried with it a certain amount of risk. With comments stored on both Disqus and WordPress, if you decide to revert to the native comments  at some stage – or otherwise need to deactivate the plugin – you are not going to lose all the discussion that took place when Disqus was implemented.

There is a plethora of information available on the Disqus website so I encourage you to take a look if you’re interested, or take a look at the comment area of one of the BMJ blogs to see the framework in action (see below).

Like Endnote, Zotero is a bibliographic management tool. It works within your browser to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. There are also Word and OpenOffice plugins which allow you to insert citations directly from your word processing software. This makes citing multiple pages, sources, or otherwise customising citations a breeze. In-text citations, footnotes and endnotes are all supported.

How does Zotero work?

On many major research websites such as digital libraries, PubMed, Google Scholar, Google Books, Amazon.com and now the BMJ journal websites, Zotero detects when a book, article, or other resource is being viewed and with a mouse click finds and saves the full reference information to a local file. If the source is an online article or web page, Zotero can optionally store a local copy of the source.

Users can then add notes, tags, and their own metadata through the in-browser interface. Selections of the local reference library data can later be exported as formatted bibliographies. Furthermore, all entries including bibliographic information and user-created rich-text memos of the selected articles can be summarized into an HTML report. Watch the video below for an overview of Zotero’s capabilities.

In addition to making the process of collecting references very simple, the iTunes–like interface of Zotero makes them extremely easy to organise. Drag and drop items between collections, or use the search feature to locate citations. Zotero offers a variety of methods so that you can organise and annotate your citations however you like.

With a simple plugin for Word or Open Office, Zotero lets you insert and manipulate your citations while you write. The software supports all major citation styles, and thousands of journal styles. You can also use it to generate quick bibliographies to share in email, blogs or anywhere else. For a thorough explanation of the Zotero Word plug-in, watch the following video:

How do I get started?

by Dr Ashley McKimm

This week sees the launch of a new BMJ website to help empower junior doctors to improve the care their patients receive. It recognises that junior doctors often gain a unique insight into healthcare problems and their solutions whilst working on the frontline.

The website, agentsforchange.bmj.com, was launched to support the two ‘Agents for Change’ conferences running this year and hopes to give juniors the tools they need to get their clinical improvement ideas heard.

Earlier this year junior doctors in England were challenged to submit worked templates of how they could improve patient safety. Over 80 submissions were received and the best were presented in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style event at the ‘Agents for Change’ July patient safety conference in London.

Videos of the pitches, posters and presentations are now available online. It aims to showcase how some junior doctors have created safety improvements in their workplace – often out-innovating the experts – and hopes to encourage others to follow.

Over the summer we’ll be launching a new collaborative forum to allow junior doctors to share their advice, as well as a categorised directory of clinical improvement projects. We’ll be encouraging juniors to use the site for support and to publish their successes online.

On the ‘Agents for Change’ website you’ll also find video presentations and blogs from healthcare experts including Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, Professor James Reason and Professor Chris Ham.

The next conference takes place at The King’s Fund on Wednesday 10 November. We’re inviting a junior doctor and senior manager from each NHS organisation to join us as we improve how we collaborate for quality care.

For junior doctors this is an opportunity to understand the structure of healthcare, learn how to develop a business case, and find out how to ensure your ideas get noticed. To register your interest in attending visit the ‘Events’ section at agentsforchange.bmj.com.

‘Agents for Change’ is developed by junior doctors and supported by the BMJ, Department of Health, King’s Fund, NPSA and NHS Confederation.

Similar to the RSS feeds I discussed a few weeks ago, email alerts are a great way of keeping up-to-date with your favourite websites without actually having to check them periodically for updates. Depending on the particular e-alert you subscribe to, you could be notified by email whenever a new issue is published or a particular article is cited.

The BMJ journals have recently added a new email alerts icon to all homepages. This can be found in the third column of each page (near the skyscraper ads). For further clarification, see the screenshot below:

What email alerts can I subscribe to?

• e-TOCs: We offer table of contents alerts for all BMJ journals. By subscribing to this service, you will receive table of contents by email when a new journal issue is published online.
• Online First: We also offer an ‘Online First’ notification, whereby users will be emailed each time a new article is published in this section.
• Topic Collections: If you wish to be informed of any new articles published in a particular subspecialty, simply select the relevant option from a list of options to receive email alerts on that topic.
• Announcements: It is possible to subscribe to a ‘Journal Announcements’ feed, which will keep you updated on all major developments feeding into the BMJ journals.
• Citations: If you wish to be alerted whenever a particular article is cited, simply sign up to the citation e-alert.
• Corrections & eLetters: Similarly, if you have an interest in a specific article, you can track any corrections made or eLetters published in response to that article.
• Keyword/Author alerts: If you keenly follow a particular author or are interested in articles published around certain keywords, simply enter these details into our system and keep abreast of any relevant publications that go online.

How do I sign up for e-alerts?

Simply click on the ‘Register for email alerts” icon pictured above and enter your email address. Then select the type of email alert that you are interested in receiving and click ‘Submit’. You are then subscribed to the e-alert and can use your email address to log-in and unsubscribe at any time. If you wish to make amendments or sign up for more alerts, simply choose the [My Alert Summary & Preferences] option and follow the on-screen instructions.

Earlier this year, Google Translate single-handedly improved the reputation and usability of automated online translations. Until then, online machine translation solutions (especially of the free kind) were marginally useful at best. Google Translate has changed that, largely by using a statistical approach to machine translation and by allowing users to help the system learn adaptively.

And with a service that allows millions of amateur translators to pour their translations into an open translation memory, Google hopes to change professional translation in the way that flickr and istockphoto have changed commercial photography. Online machine translation has the power to revolutionise communication by eliminating language barriers, bridging the gap between cultures, providing services and information to speakers of minority languages, and transforming global e-commerce by allowing even the smallest online vendor to serve the international market.

So, just how good is the output from Google Translate?

Well, it depends. Sometimes, it stinks. Other times it is quite effective. And some people even claim that there are instances that Google’s language translator can provide a translation as if a human translates it.

A lot of it clearly depends on the subject matter and language pair being used. For instance, a review of the system’s French abilities gave it a middling grade. The reviewer thought “that it’s ok to get the gist of it, but the grammar isn’t great and there are words missing here and there, also French words appear instead of English words in the translation.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

How does it work?

The BMJ journals are now all  compatible with Google Translate. To view one of our sites in over 50 different languages, simply type the URL into the relevant field on Google (see below).

You will then be directed to the same site, but it will have been translated in your language of choice. See an example of Evidence-Based Medicine in French below:

Google has recently added some nifty and useful features, with the biggest change being the addition of instant, real-time translations.  It’s actually quite amazing: you can type in complex words and see their roots as you type. It also allows you to craft sentences faster and more efficiently in other languages.

Google Translate’s two other additions are nearly as impressive. Another new feature helps English speakers pronounce and read non-roman languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Clicking “Show romanizaiton” will provide you a phonetic representation of the translation so you can read it off instantly. Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian aren’t supported yet. However, Arabic, Persian, and Hindi now have a feature that allows you to type out the words as they sound (in English) and convert them to native script.

Finally, Google’s added text-to-speech support for English translations: just click the speaker icon to hear your translation. Overall, these new features are a good upgrade to Google Translate, especially the real-time translations, which we think may change how people interact with the tool.

If you want to learn more, Google’s provided a video demoing these features:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FijOWfO3Frk

Online polls have become a staple of the Internet; a very common feature used by all types of web sites. Polls can be found at the end of articles, as complements to blog posts and sometimes comprise the sole content of a web site. Sites featuring the most glib content to the most serious news stories will include online polls and online poll results, making the feature one of the most ubiquitous on the World Wide Web. The use of online panels has even become the most popular research method in Australia.^[1]

Features of the Online Poll
Online polls, surveys and verification forms may all have a similar look and many of the same characteristics. Creating a true online poll, however, means adhering to certain features of this device. How do you know you’ve got a poll on your hands? Just look for the warning signs. A poll usually presents only a single question for consideration, with multiple answers for users to pick between. Some polls may offer only a simple yes or no, while others may contain much more elaborate answers for users to click.

Online Polls on the BMJ journals
In an attempt to increase the interactivity of our sites, online polls are being implemented into the second column of each journal (see screenshot above). This positioning means that the panel will appear on every page on the journal site except the homepage. Our editors are working hard to create questions which relate specifically to articles published in the most recent issue of their journal. These questions will rotate on a monthly basis and will give us an invaluable insight into the opinions of our readers.

The following questions are currently live on the journal sites. To share your opinion, simply click on a link below, read the accompanying article and then cast your vote in the online poll which is located on the right-hand side of your screen.

• Are backpackers and gap year students a high risk group?
  (Sexually Transmitted Infections)
• Should paramedics perform prehospital endotracheal intubation?
  (Emergency Medicine Journal)
• Have any individual patient stories influenced the way in which you practice medicine?
  (Medical Humanities)
• Do you have a rapid response system in your hospital?
  (Quality and Safety in Health Care)
• Should CMS reimburse Carotid Stent procedures for equivalent indications as are currently being reimbursed for Carotid Endarterectomy?
  (Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery)

Just like blogs, podcasts are yet another Web 2.0 offshoot, bringing content-generation away from centralised sources (i.e., radio, television) into the consumers themselves. The term podcasting comes from “iPod” and “broadcasting”. However, you don’t need an iPod to listen to a podcast. Anyone with a computer or mp3 player can join in and this post will teach you how.

So, what exactly is a podcast?

A podcast is an audio programme distributed via the Internet. It’s a way for individuals and companies to create audio programs and allow users to download, listen, and subscribe to them very easily. If you’re familiar with blogging you can think of podcasting as “audio blogging.”

A podcast is different from a regular downloaded audio recording or streaming audio, however, in that the content-distribution is automatically done through RSS. The ability to subscribe to podcasts via this technology allows fresh content to be downloaded to your computer or portable audio player (e.g., an iPod). For instance, a regular podcast subscriber would expect the audio recording to be automatically transferred to his computer (and portable media player, if available) once there is a new edition or episode of his subscribed programmes available.

How do I subscribe to BMJ podcasts?

10 of the BMJ journals now have their own podcast channels, where users can listen to interviews and debates on the current topics in their specialist field. All of the available podcasts are listed on the podcast homepage http://podcasts.bmj.com/.

You can subscribe to a podcast with podcast software such as iTunes, Juice or Doppler or you can subscribe using a web based “feed reader” such as My Yahoo or Google Reader. Please read the instructions on their sites for more information.

When you click on the “Subscribe now” button you will be given the different options to subscribe to the podcast. We have provided “One Click” links for you to automatically subscribe if you already use iTunes, My Yahoo or Google Reader as your podcast reader. Simply click on the link and the software or service will do the rest. If you use a different podcast reader then you can copy and paste the “Feed URL” into your podcast reader. Refer to the help on your feed reader for instructions on how to do this.

Alternatively, users can listen to podcasts on a journal’s individual homepage using the tabbed widget (mentioned in a previous post) towards the bottom of the page. Simply click on ‘podcasts’, select the title that interests you and a media player will open within the same window (see screenshot below).