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Trip Database Blog

Liberating the literature

TRIP on Facebook

A quick update on the TRIP Database Facebook page – it’s doing really well.

We’ve currently got 233 ‘fans’ (a term I dislike in this context) and we’re having conversations all the time. I suppose, as I’ve said before, it’s another medium to reach out and ‘meet’ our users and to hear what they want.

If you’re not signed up already – go and visit and become a ‘fan’ today.

Open access

The juggernaut that is ‘open access’ continues to gain pace (or as they say in this Nature News article ‘The push to open up scientific knowledge to all looks set to go into overdrive’).

The article is a good introduction to the topic so I recommend you read it.

TRIP thrives on linking to high quality open access content but we need to embrace it even more. I can’t help thinking that auto-searching PubMed Central (not forgetting the UK equivalent) would be a good ‘next step’ for us.

But can we help in other ways? If you have any ideas, let us know.

TRIP Answers

I’ve just been looking back and TRIP Answers has only been around for 16 months (but still had well over 1 million page views), it seems like it has been with us for much longer. Perhaps 16 months is a good time for a ‘makeover’, which is what we’ve done with the site. The changes include:

  • Re-designed homepage to make it more dynamic.
  • Simplified the look and feel of each answer.
  • Introduced a ‘related articles’ panel which pulls back articles from the main TRIP Database which are similar to the actual Q&A. This is especially useful for older Q&As as it helps to show if there is any new research.
  • Significantly improved the search, it now uses the same system as found on the TRIP Database.

Lots of other smaller changes to improve the site.

Go take a look and let us know what you think.

Usability testing.

When we relaunched TRIP last November it was with the help of Minervation, an Oxford-based company who specialises in ‘evidence based’ websites, knowledge management, information support and usability testing. They carried out some usability testing of our test site.

I blogged about how painful a process it was, but ultimately worthwhile.

They’ve just released a case-study of their work with the charity CancerHelp. Well worth a read!

7,000 users

This morning we hit 7,000 registered users.

The TRIP and Low Resource Initiative: Update

We launched the TRIP initiative to highlight content suitable for low-resource settings less than 3 weeks ago (click here).

I’m pleased to see that already 96 articles have been approved (clicked on twice!) to form a small sub-set of articles, this includes 20 systematic reviews and 6 guidelines. A sample of document is shown below.

You never know when you launch an initiative if it’ll suceed. It’s far too early to say if our ‘low resource’ initiative will – but we couldn’t really have expected a better start.

Videos for TRIP

I came across a free screencast site called Jing which allows to make screencasts/videos.
I’ve been looking out for this sort of software for a while, so I was keen to give it a go and here is my first attempt.

I’d love to hear feedback!

TRIP Database on wikipedia

There’s a wikipedia article on the TRIP Database (click here).

If you’re involved in wikipedia – help improve it.

TRIP and Facebook

We’ve gone and set up a Facebook page for TRIP, click here to visit – and become a ‘fan’!

It’s still not clear the advantage of being on Facebook, but it is another medium to connect with people, which is probably reason enough. But, if people are more aware of the potential for TRIP on Facebook – please let us know.

Other Facebook pages include:

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