Research Facilitation Websites

PUBMED, PUBMEDCENTRAL

PubMed is the world's medical literature.  Usually with abstracts.  With flags if there is a free version.  (You can also search PubMed with a check box on left, Free Full Text).  

PubMedCentral is a parallel entry point which offers you ONLY free article results.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/   (Pub Med Central, known as PMC)

 RESEARCH RABBIT

     Elaborate hub for research paper tracking.  Free for academics.   Can petition for special permission to get an account for example, leveraging a ResearchGate account to ask for a Research Rabbitt account.

https://www.researchrabbit.ai/

    Cool video by Danny Hatcher demonstrates how powerful Research Rabbitt is. (Check out his channel too).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHBql2JncyU

SCI HUB

    This is known as a quasi illicit resource or in Wikipedia's term, "shadow library," that may have posted PDFs of articles that are otherwise behind a paywall.   Requires search by a tag like the IOL universal link.

https://sci-hub.se/

RESEARCH GATE

    This has a level for free accounts but requires review and authorization if you aren't at a recognized business or university.  I've applied for a free account (it found some 20 papers I was a coauthor on), which they gave me after some correspondence and proof I've authored true academic articles.   

Research Gate been described both as a library resource AND a sort of Facebook for science (wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResearchGate  )   Among other things it appears to search keywords in BioRxiv (which could be searched directly).   You can search a concept and get a three-column result listing (papers) and (common authors, locations) and (questions answered by forum).  They send perpetual emails once you get signed up, so I have my email filter those to a back folder away from my main inbox.

https://www.researchgate.net/

Somewhat similar to Research Gate is Academia.edu, although I haven't spent much time with it.

    https://www.academia.edu/

   BIORXIV

   Preprints.  Zillions.  https://www.biorxiv.org/

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

   Handy Google based search of world literature

https://scholar.google.com/

GOOGLE BIOMED EXPLORER

   BioMed Explorer mostly produced PubMed results, BUT, produces somewhat different results with broader/smarter/more-AI-type  recognition of keyword ideas than you get with a PubMed direct search.  Worth trying.

https://sites.research.google/biomedexplorer/

UNPAYWALL (Plug In)

   This is a free background Google Chrome Plug-in that shows a green flag if an article is available for free somewhere.  I think much of the time it's just doing what PubMedCentral (the free paper version of PubMed) does but it's still helpful when the green flag pops up. 

ENDNOTE CLICK (Plug In)

   I use Endnote XX (Endnote 20) software for reference citation management and bibliography formatting.   (Other choices include Mendeley, etc).  I installed an Endnote Click Chrome plug-in which gives me a purple View PDF banner when a free PDF is available.  Again, I'm not sure what UnPaywall and Endnote Click offer beyond PubMed's own notification of when a free PDF is on PubMedCentral, but maybe there are in fact sometimes papers at only one of these.  See graphic below.  The native PubMed free article tags are in blue, the Endnote Click tag in purple, and the UnPayWall tag in green.   

Here, I'm being told in triplicate (blue, purple, green) there's free PDF.

___

Google NGRAMS vs PubMed Hits by Year

This is the website where you can do word frequency searches over centuries.  It's books, so use this when you're looking at word use over decades.

https://books.google.com/ngrams

Note that PUBMED now gives you a hit frequency bar chart for searches (e.g. your topic hit10 papers in 2010, 15 in 2011, 25 in 2012 etc).

For whatever reason, "physician extender" (e.g. nurse practitioner) had a boom, in books, only around 1980 (Ngram left), but remains popular in PubMed today (PubMed bar chart by year, right).

click to enlarge

BioRender.Com

On a different note, BioRender.com is a graphics & illlustration website that has an initial free level, which lets you make very complex cell biology charts as used in journals like Nature.   

Reader Aggregators

I get numerous newsletters, blog posts, articles, aggregated into a collected eReader called FEEDLY.  (I used the free version; extra tools with the paid one.)  

FEEDLY automatically aggregates.  In contrast to that, there are also places to "send" articles from anywhere, for reading later, such as Instapaper, Pocket, Raindrop.io.  I have tried these briefly and found they often failed with my frequently subscription-based reading (NYT for example).  However, I send articles often to a reading folder in EVERNOTE (or ONENOTE) which seem to handle the subscription articles almost always perfectly.   Another "send to" reader is Readwise.io, which I understand is designed to hold "highlights" and can aggregate in highlights from Kindle.   In a paid version, it can sync Kindle clippings into organizational software called NOTION.

Video

Also on a different note, I sometimes make short videos on "hot topics" to help people understand Medicare policy innovations.   I have a fairly elaborate setup with a Sony ZV-1 camera, and Elgato studio light, Key Light Air, $110, and a fast gaming laptop to support video.  I film via OBS Studio, which is fairly elaborate freeware.   This lets me use e.g. a green screen while filming, while using another channel to put a PowerPoint slide over my shoulder.  I initially used a simple $15 green screen cloth from Amazon, and later upgraded to a $140 Elgato green screen system.  (And a very simple trick I like: make your PowerPoints for videos on a bright green background, then use OBS to greenscreen or chromakey-out the background.)  

Windows 10 has very simple video editor - at the tic-tac-toe level -  so you can e.g. film a 30 second intro and a 2 minute PowerPoint talk and then bind them together before uploading to YouTube, or clip off the last 5 seconds when you're reaching to turn off the camera.  After some research and dithering, I graduated to a $70 amateur editing program called Filmora X.  Another choice would be what I'm told is a slightly friendlier editor, MovAvi, $60.  There are also 3 popular free editors, OpenShot, ShotCut, KdenLive, any one of which would probably be a good entry point.  YouTube and Google offer tons of reviews and instructions about all fo these.