New Annals Web site offers more features

From the December ACP Observer, copyright © 2003 by the American College of Physicians.

The new Annals of Internal Medicine Web site now gives online subscribers more ways to access and use one of the world's top medical journals.

Earlier this year, the Web site expanded its online features by moving to a new electronic publisher, Stanford University's HighWire Press. The shift is significant because it gives online Annals subscribers access to the 300-plus journals published by HighWire.

If an article cited in Annals appears in one of HighWire's other journals, users can simply click on a link to get the full text. Linked titles include New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association and the British Medical Journal.

The new Annals site also gives subscribers links to related but uncited articles through PubMed, the National Library of Medicine's search service. Users can also follow an Annals article over time, receiving e-mail alerts when it is cited in other journals. This new feature lets subscribers stay current with topics or follow up on cutting-edge research findings.

Handheld access

Online Annals also offers several new features for handhelds. Annals subscribers using Palm handhelds can download Annals issues to their desktop computers and "hot sync" their handheld to transfer all the issue's content. Back issues are available for handheld computers, and so are article collections such as practice guidelines and essays from the On Being a Doctor series. Users with wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs) can access a version of Annals formatted for small screens.

Handheld users can also use third party software to download figures, algorithms and other patient care tools from Annals articles. Instructions are available online.

And subscribers with Palm PDAs can hot sync electronic decision aids from online Annals articles. To introduce this service, an article on managing patients with solitary pulmonary nodules in this year's May 6 issue included a tool to help calculate post-test cancer probability and choose the most appropriate type of diagnostic imaging.

Links to PIER

Online Annals will soon include links to the Physicians' Information and Education Resource (PIER), the College's Web-based information-support tool. When reading an Annals article online, users will be able to link to related content at PIER with the click of a button.

For more information, see the Annals Web site.

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