Yesterday, we released our final version of Elements for 2013, v4.7. One of the most exciting features in this release was the introduction of a new data source, Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC). Based on the PubMed Central (PMC) database developed in the US and part of the network of PMC repositories, Europe PMC provides a comprehensive and reliable source of full-texts and publications to further enhance the wide data coverage already available in Elements.
How does Europe PMC differ from PubMed and PMC?
Simple, it has more content. Europe PMC provides access to 28 million abstracts and over 2.6 million biomedical and life science full-text articles (of which over 570,000are Open Access). It does this by providing a single point of access to the 28 million abstracts from PubMed and the 2.5 million full-texts from PMC. It then supplements this with an additional 5 million records from other relevant sources. In short, it’s awesome!
An alternative citation count
Europe PMC also provides a valuable source of citation counts, from which Elements calculates H-Index values. Citation counts are hyperlinked to the corresponding Europe PMC pages that provide further detail on the citations.
The technical stuff
As with full-text files from arXiv, Elements users will be able to through-load full-text files directly from Europe PMC to their institutional repository. This bit of functionality will require the Elements Repository Tools package.
Thanks to our users
As with all of our initiatives, Europe PMC integration was put into development after user feedback. You can read more about Europe PMC on their website, and if you’re a user of Elements, head over to the Feature Request forum to join the conversation.