News of Loansome Doc’s retirement on July 1, 2019 has sent shock waves throughout the health sciences community and the libraries that served them. It is quite unfortunate for the numerous solo practitioners, medical groups, and other health-related entities who need affordable access to credible information from the academic/professional literature. Furthermore, many health sciences libraries find themselves in a moral dilemma because they want to provide biomedical information yet may be in violation of their electronic subscription licenses. Though the need for information remains, it is understandable that no library will jeopardize access for their current students, staff, and faculty or cause any embarrassment to their institutions.
In addition to visiting your local public or academic library, there are many online resources with freely available biomedical information and practice guidelines. Below is a select list of those resources:
- bioRxiv – Pre-print articles in the life sciences
- Cochrane Collaboration – Over 7000 Cochrane summaries of their systematic reviews
- Directory of Open Access Journals – Free full-text access to over 13,000 open access journals and 4 million articles
- ECRI Guidelines Trust – Clinical guidelines (account registration required)
- Emerging Infectious Diseases – Journal from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- medrxiv – Pre-print articles in the biomedical and clinical sciences
- Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report – Journal from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- National Center for Biotechnology Information Bookshelf – Contains over 1,000 books and 5,000 reports from national and international agencies and publishers
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (UK) – Clinical guidelines from the National Health Service (UK)
- Preventing Chronic Diseases – Journal from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- PubMed – Over 29 million citations and abstracts in the biomedical literature. Click on Free Full-Text to access over 5 million free full-text articles.
- PubMed Central – Free full-text repository of biomedical and life sciences literature
- United States Preventive Services Task Force Recommendations – Adult and pediatric recommendations for screening and prevention
- VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guidelines – Clinical practice guidelines from the Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense