You may have noticed that things have changed a bit around here — we’re in the midst of a major system upgrade. While the site is just as functional as it had been previously, there might be a couple of rough edges with some of the newest features. We expect to have these issues resolved by the end of the day. Update: We’ve resolved the major performance issues; let us know if you spot additional problems. We’ll also restore all the old content from the News blog, which as you can see, has gotten a major facelift as well [Update: Posts imported; still working on some cosmetic issues].
We think you’ll agree that the site has a fantastic slate of new features.
Most important is a completely revamped citation generator. Bloggers have created over 6,000 posts using our old citation generator, which required users to enter a complex DOI number or even manually enter all the information about a journal article. But users asked us for a more sophisticated search function to make it easier to find the articles they want to cite on their blogs. After weeks of careful coding, testing, and working with indexing services, we’ve addressed their concerns.
Now if you’d like to create a post about an article, all you have to do is enter a few words from its title (the first line is plenty), and our system will automatically search three of the largest databases of peer-reviewed journal articles in existence: CrossRef, Pubmed, and arXiv. You can then select your article from your search results (it usually tops the list), add topic tags, and post to your blog in just seconds. You can also search using DOI, PMID, or arXiv ID if you know it.
We’ve been testing the system for several weeks, and we think it’s so efficient that you’ll want to go back and add ResearchBlogging.org citations to your old posts and import them into our database as well.
If you do, you could be rewarded with more traffic, because another new feature of our site is the implementation of our partnership with Pubget, the service that allows users to find journal articles and get PDFs in one step. All posts on ResearchBlogging.org that are indexed by Pubget now feature an icon which takes them directly to the article on the Pubget site. If your institution has Pubget (over 50 now do), you’ll get the article right away.
Further, if you search for an article on Pubget and a ResearchBlogging.org member has blogged about it, Pubget will include a direct link to all the posts discussing that article.
There’s more to come, too. Look for several exciting announcements from ResearchBlogging.org in the coming weeks.
