LANCET backfiles now available freely

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the availability of THE LANCET Backfiles, which provide access to a historical archive of medical articles dating back to 1823. Participants explore the implications of this development for libraries, researchers, and the preservation of historical medical literature.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • One participant highlights the significance of having access to over 340,000 articles from THE LANCET, noting its historical importance in medical research.
  • Another participant questions whether physical copies of THE LANCET journals in libraries can be discarded now that the backfiles are available online, expressing a preference for the tactile experience of browsing older journals.
  • A different participant expresses hope that this move by THE LANCET will inspire other journals to follow suit in making historical archives accessible.
  • One participant shares their experience of library practices, indicating that while some libraries discard older issues, others maintain extensive archives, emphasizing the variability in library policies regarding journal retention.
  • Concerns are raised about the effort required to digitize historical documents, with references to other publishers' practices regarding access to older papers.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a mix of enthusiasm for the availability of THE LANCET Backfiles and concern about the implications for physical journal collections. There is no consensus on whether libraries should retain older physical copies, as opinions vary on the value of historical journals versus digital access.

Contextual Notes

Some participants reference the challenges of digitizing large volumes of historical content and the differing policies among libraries regarding the retention of older journal issues. There is also mention of varying access timelines for other publishers' archives.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be of interest to librarians, researchers in the medical field, historians of medicine, and anyone involved in academic publishing or library sciences.

Monique
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For the first time in medical history, researchers and scholars
across the globe have the ability to search a historical archive
of over 340,000 articles dating from THE LANCET'S inception in
1823. THE LANCET Backfiles are now available on ScienceDirect as
fully searchable PDFs, supported by citations, abstracts and
references.

THE LANCET has published some of the first reports on such
groundbreaking medical research as:

- The first caesarian performed under anaesthesia
- Lister's antiseptic principle
- The value of penicillin
- Heliobacter pylori
- HIV Transmission
- In-vitro fertilization
- Mad Cow disease
- SARS as a coronavirus

For more information on THE LANCET Backfiles visit:
http://www.info.sciencedirect.com/backfiles/collections/lancet/index.shtml
 
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cool.
Does this mean we can throw out all of the Lancet journals sitting on the shelves in the library I work in?

Well, i hope not, its really cool flicking through those 1850 journals and looking at the crazy letters those folk wrote back inthose days...
 
Thanks for the info. Hopefully they start a trend here!
 
Originally posted by Another God

Does this mean we can throw out all of the Lancet journals sitting on the shelves in the library I work in?

They do in at my faculty library, they only keep the last ten years of the lancet, but the major library of the university keeps everything. There actually people that do not that recent paper can be access through the net.

It cool that lancet has gone back to their beginning but it is a hell a work to scan millions of pages. For the American society of microbiology (ASM) paper and many other publisher we have free access to the papers 6 months after their publish some it a year but they only go back to 1998-1996.
 

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