Test the New Version of BioMail!
A Current Awareness Alternative for PubMed
What is BioMail?
BioMail, located at http://biomail.org, provides an alternative to "Cubby" by regularly performing user-customized search updates for recent scientific papers in the PubMed database. Registration and use of BioMail is freely available throughout the world. The BioMail program automatically alerts users to new papers in a particular field of interest, and sends a list of retrieved articles to a user's email account. The updated retrieval comes in HTML format, which allows users to view abstracts for selected references. References may also be viewed in MEDLINE format, and then exported into a reference manager program, such as EndNote.
Why is BioMail helpful?
With BioMail, there is no need to remember when it's time to run search updates. All stored searches in BioMail may be accessed, edited, or deleted at any time. Other advantages of BioMail include its easy-to-use intuitive interface, and the ability to test a search strategy to see how much retrieval will be obtained. Searches in BioMail are executed exactly like a direct PubMed search.
What is happening with BioMail?
After a year of development funded by the National Library of Medicine, a new version of BioMail is nearly ready for release. The new version of BioMail will become available in the near future, and will include an updated look and enhanced functionality. A trial site featuring the new look of BioMail is available for testing at http://new.biomail.org, and the developers of BioMail are very interested in your input. It's very easy (and free) to register for an account, try the different features, and send feedback or reports of bugs by clicking on the "Contact Administrator" link. Any reports of problems should include mention of the operating system, as well as browser name and version number used.
Major changes to the system include a total redesign of the user interface, to be more clean and attractive. BioMail has always allowed users to designate a frequency for delivery of updates ranging from twice per week to monthly, but the new system adds the capability to specify a particular day of the month when updates should be executed. The revised system also provides support for the Nucleotide database, in addition to PubMed.
http://new.biomail.org is a temporary site, and any stored searches will disappear when the system is upgraded and the enhancements are incorporated into the main BioMail site, http://biomail.org. The revised version of BioMail will continue to be a free service, relying on Open Source code. Please consider giving BioMail a trial run! Let us know what you think about it!
[Editor's Note: You can test run a search in PubMed, click on Details, and copy your search strategy. Then paste this into the BioMail search box.
When you get your BioMail results, you will need to open your Cubby first in order to activate your LinkOut icons. Then when you click on the individual records from the BioMail message, you will see the icons for the LinkOut providers that you have saved in your Cubby.]