The eBMJ


17 May 2007 Introduction
This site contains the full text of almost all articles published in the weekly BMJ from January 1994. In addition, it contains unique material and many useful features.
Go to the website here http://www.bmj.com

The careers section how has a greatly enlarged separate site with job vacancies, career advice and counselling services:
Go to the website here - http://www.bmjcareers.com/

Most of the site is still free and can be used without registration or password. In 2005, however, some editorial content became available only to subscribers.
Go to the website here - http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7409/241

Other information about the site - who to contact and so on - is at:
Go to the website here - http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/contact-us

You can read an editorial by the former editor and web editor about new developments:
Delemothe T, Smith R. Revel in electronic and paper media. BMJ 2000; 321(7255):192 (22 July 2000)
Go to the website here - http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7255/192

The eBMJ is also participating in a WHO brokered scheme to offer electronic access to the journals of major publishers free of charge:
Smith R. Closing the digital divide. BMJ 2003; 327: 238 (1 February 2003)
Go to the website here - http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7383/238

Kmietowicz K.. Deal allows developing countries free access to journals. BMJ 2001; 323(7304):65 (14 July 2001)
Go to the website here - http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7304/65

Some of the special features of the eBMJ are:
  • Full text access from January 1994. Some of the material is behind access controls. All original research articles will be freely available from the moment of publication, the full text of other journal articles (for example, those appearing in the editorials, clinical review, and education and debate sections) will be free for the first week after publication, behind access controls for the next 51 weeks, and then free again after that. BMA members can access all the articles by logging in with their BMA website username and password
  • Additional news stories and longer versions of some papers
  • Keyword search by title word, abstract word or any article word
  • PDF copy print facility: a perfect photocopy without smudges
  • Electronic responses: an instant bulletin board to encourage debate
  • Automatic email if someone comments on an article which interests you
  • Collected resources: lists of articles on specialties or topics
  • Hypertext links to other articles by a particular author in the eBMJ
  • Hyperlinks from reference citations to the articles to which they refer
  • Cross journal searching across multiple journals
  • Links to Pubmed: the web free access Medline
  • Links to other related articles in the same issue
  • CiteTrack can be used to alert users by email whenever new content in bmj.com or a participating journal is published that matches criteria based on the topics, authors and articles you want to track
    Other BMJ publishing specialist journals can be accessed by following the journals link : Go to the website here - http://journals.bmj.com/
Search tips
  • Make searches as specific as possible (faster and more likely to return article(s) of interest).
  • Use a specific AND command if you want specific information. eBMJ automatically retrieves articles which contain all of your terms (Boolean OR). These terms are weighted but this automatic facility increases the items retrieved.
  • Enter phrases in "quotation marks".
  • Enter the minimum amount of information necessary to uniquely identify the article or articles (volume/page number, authors, and/or specific key words).
  • Use only the English A-Z alphabet (use the wildcard * for other special characters).
  • If you know that your article was published last year then change the date ranges (at the bottom of the advanced search page).
  • Search for a series name and a subject word: eg, "fortnightly review" and dementia, if you need a review. BMJ review series are: "fortnightly review", or "abc".
Different types of searches
If you are looking for the full text of an article for which you have details.
It is quickest to use information which is either unique or specific rather than search with common words. This search order is recommended:

Exact information
Enter the volume and starting page number in the quick search box at the top right of the home page. This will uniquely identify the article, making it unnecessary to enter other information.

However, if several letters or news items appear on one page, then subsequent items after the first one will have a letter attached to the page number:
Go to the website here - http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/320/7232/398/a

Partial information
If you just know the starting page number, enter it in the search box as this is still can be used as an identifying number. Other citation information can be entered in the author or keywords boxes.

Title (or partial title)
Full titles, or title phrases, should be entered in "quotation marks." This forces a phrase search rather than a search for each separate word.

Author(s)
Authors can be entered in the "Author" box. The last name is the main identifier; although an initial can be used to further specify your search.

If you use initials, they should be entered in the form: Smith, X or Jones, Z

Multiple authors can be entered in a single box provided that no initials are used and the names are connected by the term AND.

If you are looking for subject information
If you want to find a few, very relevant articles (low recall, high specificity) then enter your words in Title or Abstract field on the advanced search screen.

If you are entering several words then link them by AND. If you don't do this, then the search engine connects multiple words (where a word is text between spaces, or a combination of characters and spaces between quotation marks) with OR.

If you are entering a phrase, then put "quotation marks" around it.

If you want to find a lot of general articles (high recall, low specificity) then enter your words in the Text/Abstract/Title box on the advanced search page.

If you are looking for Career Focus articles
You can browse the current issue or the archive by broad subject headings if you click on BMJ Careers on the home page.

If you cannot find the article that you need, type "Career Focus" and the subject in the text words field of the search box.

Search techniques
Stemming
The stemming character (*) can be used to search the beginning letters of words, forcing a match with any word containing a given root. The search engine incorporates a stemming feature, but proper use of a stemming can give better results.

Wildcards
The same character is the wildcard character and can also be used to truncate words before non-English characters such as an umlaut (ü) or an accent (é). Eg: Grundström should be searched as Grundstr*.

Boolean logic
Basic useful Boolean terms include AND, OR, NOT, and ( ). You can use them themselves or in the "Author" field (with last names only), but you are are most commonly used in the text words field for subject searches.

The OR connector is the default expression between terms. It is important to remember to use the AND connector to retrieve specific information. The NOT term can be used to exclude articles containing certain terms. For more complex searches, these operators may be combined with one another, optionally using parentheses to group terms to avoid ambiguity in a complex query. For example:
("signal transduction" AND (phosphorylation OR kinase)) NOT xenopus

Date ranges
Date ranges (at the bottom of the advanced search page) can narrow a search.

Printing
You can print an article in two ways:
  • Click on file;
  • Click on print;
  • And when the new window displays, click on OK, or hit the return or enter key on your keyboard.
Alternatively, all recent articles can be printed as a PDF copy. This gives a perfect reproduction with graphs and pictures. Older articles may not have this option.
  • Display the article;
  • The box in the top right corner will say: Reprint (PDF) of this article;
  • Click on this link, then use the print function in the software.
Moving around the eBMJ
If you find useful material, the box in the top right corner allows you several browse options:
  • You may have the option to link to related editorials or articles
  • You can view related articles in PubMed (the free web Medline)
  • You can search PubMed for other articles by this author (or, rather, people with the same name)
  • You can view electronic responses to the article. Most of these are unique to the eBMJ although some may be printed in the paper journal later
  • You can view other related eBMJ papers which are in the Collected Resources section
  • When an article in eBMJ cites an article which has been published by another HighWire Press journal hyperlinks allow you to move to the cited article abstract
  • You can perform the same search in other journals through the 'search across multiple journals' option on the advanced search page.
  • If this article refers to another eBMJ article in the references then you can link to it
  • As you read the article you can link to references if useful
  • You can consult a citation map of other articles which cite the article you are consulting (giving the frequency of citation too) and link to them.

© British Medical Association 2008

Log in to your BMA here