JAB and PubMed

[rmiller]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know why the Journal of Applied Biomechanics is only indexed on PubMed for issues since 2006 or so? There are a lot of good papers in this journal (and also from back when it was a sports biomechanics journal; forget what the actual title was) that don't get read or referenced much as they don't appear on what's probably our biggest and most widely used search engine.

It would be nice if its full history was included on PubMed searches. Does anyone know the procedures or avenues for bringing this about? Are there fees involved that Human Kinetics would have to pay, or something of that nature?

Ross

[DaveGutekunst]

Hi Ross - I've also found this to be a frustrating aspect of Pubmed. I don't know the solution, but a temporary way around it is to use Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), especially the Advanced Scholar Search option that allows you to search much as you would in Pubmed Advanced Search. The major downside of Google Scholar providing more inclusive search results is that it can yield plenty of unwanted results as well (abstracts, non-peer-reviewed papers, patents, etc.).

[rmiller]

I've had similar issues with Google Scholar (lots of unwanted results) but maybe I'm just not very good with it =) I've also sometimes resorted to searching the Human Kinetics site with the JAB filter on, which works pretty well but is a bit of a nuisance.

[tbuchanan84]

Dear Ross,

The Journal of Applied Biomechanics began as a sports journal but later changed its name & focus to include biomedical papers--a requirement for Medline/PubMed indexing. JAB is only indexed on PubMed for issues since 2006 because that it was in that year that our proposal to the National Library of Medicine was approved to have JAB indexed. The NLM does not back-index journals unless they receive indexing approval within their first year or so. Since we had been around for a while before that, indexing began in 2006--the year of approval.

Perhaps a dull answer, but the answer nonetheless. I agree, it would be nice to have its full history available on PubMed!

Sincerely,

Thomas S Buchanan, PhD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Applied Biomechanics
Laird Professor, University of Delaware