SafetyLit

Last updated
SafetyLit
SafetyLit Logo (registered servicemark) 2012.png
Preventing Injuries By Providing Information
ProducerSafetyLit Foundation, Inc. (United States)
HistoryInitiated in 1995
LanguagesEnglish
Access
ProvidersJournal publishers, conference organizers, etc.
CostFree
Coverage
DisciplinesAgriculture, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, biology, business & public administration, chemistry, consumer product testing, criminology, demography, dentistry, economics, education, engineering specialties, epidemiology, ergonomics, faith scholarship, fire suppression & prevention, forensic specialties, genetics, geography, geology, history, industrial design, interior design, journalism, law & law enforcement, literature, mathematics, media studies, medicine, meteorology, nursing, occupational safety & hygiene, oceanography, pharmacology, philosophy, physics, physiology, political science & policy, psychology, public health, social work, sociology, sports & kinematics, statistics, theology, toxicology, transportation, urban planning, and other fields.
Record depthIndex & Abstract
Format coverageJournal articles, reports, conference proceedings, theses
Temporal coverageMid- 17th century (1665) to present day
Geospatial coverageGlobal
No. of recordsOver 810,000 records (Jun 2024)
Update frequencyDaily
Print edition
Print titleSafetyLit Weekly Update Bulletin
Print dates1995-present
(available online 2000-)
ISSN 1556-8849
Links
Website www.safetylit.org
Title list(s) www.safetylit.org/week/journals.php

SafetyLit (short for "Safety Literature") is a bibliographic database and online update of recently published scholarly research of relevance to those interested in the broad field of injury prevention and safety promotion. [1] [2] Initiated in 1995, SafetyLit is a project of the SafetyLit Foundation in cooperation with the San Diego State University College of Health & Human Services and the World Health Organization - Department of Violence and Injury Prevention. [3]

Contents

Background

Like the US National Library of Medicine's (NLM) PubMed system, SafetyLit is a free service that is distributed without commercial messages. There are many online literature databases. Most are subscription-based, costly and are available only through a library. [4] Typically, these databases focus on a specific scientific discipline. For example, PubMed has a bio-medicine focus, [5] PsycINFO focuses upon behavioral issues, [6] Compendex on engineering, [7] etc.

While other bibliographic databases can focus upon the publications of only one or two professional disciplines, it has been known since the early 20th Century that issues relevant to safety research and policy development arise from many distinct disciplines. [8] [9] Thus, SafetyLit draws its content from many disciplines. Articles are selected that are relevant to the issues of injury prevention and safety promotion from over 16000 scholarly journals (as of November 2020) in the physical, biological and social sciences, as well as engineering, medicine, and the applied social sciences. SafetyLit also indexes selected doctoral theses and relevant technical reports from government agencies and NGOs. [10]

History

The idea for SafetyLit came from an electronic mailing list service provided in the early-1990s by Sandra Bonzo and other librarians at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC). This bibliographic update was a print-out of article citations from Medline that were indexed with selected MeSH terms related to the treatment and prevention of injuries. This free service was provided at a time when searching Medline was quite costly. The NCIPC update service ended in late 1994, about one year before the National Library of Medicine began providing an experimental version of PubMed. [11] [12]

To help fill the gap from that loss, SafetyLit began in early 1995 as a simple email message sent to about 20 people who were affiliated with the CDC-funded state Disability Prevention Programs [13] in Louisiana and a few other U.S. states. The SafetyLit message omitted the treatment references to concentrate upon prevention. As more and more people learned about SafetyLit, the mailing list expanded. In June 1997 PubMed began to index the contents of journals beyond the restrictive Medline core. At that time SafetyLit began using PubMed as its source because 1) it was a free service; 2) its increased scope beyond Medline journals; and 3) improvements to the PubMed query system. By the end of 1998, with an administrative move from Louisiana to the San Diego State University, Graduate School of Public Health), the updates were circulated to more than 5000 subscribed addresses. By the close of 1999 the address list had expanded beyond 15,000. [11]

During 1999, several publishing companies began supplying their journal article citation metadata and author's abstracts to SafetyLit and the journal sources expanded far beyond the bio-medicine material that was available through PubMed. In 2001 the SafetyLit update service moved from a series of lengthy flat-file newsletters to a database-driven dynamic website. The email newsletter became a simple announcement that a pdf version of Update Bulletin is available on the SafetyLit website. With that improvement, an archive database with search capacity was established. From that time forward, each week brought the addition of about 400-500 recently published articles and more than 150 articles from the back-files of journals that published relevant material. [10]

In mid-2013, to sustain the contents of the languishing VioLit database, SafetyLit formed a partnership with the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV), a research program of the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The VioLit database, had items related to preventing youth violence with most records including a thorough review written by CSPV experts. The VioLit expanded article reviews were added to existing SafetyLit records where there is overlap of the database contents and VioLit items that had been missing from SafetyLit were also added. [14]

From 1998, through 2013 SafeyLit was supported by grants and contracts with several federal and California state agencies. The U.S. federal Budget sequestration in mid-2013 led to a loss of all federal funding and most of the California support that was available via U.S. Preventive Block Grant and Maternal and Child Health Block Grant support. With the loss of this revenue stream the SafetyLit Foundation was incorporated as a tax exempt organization to facilitate independent funding. [15]

Coverage

Sources

Although SafetyLit began with a focus upon articles from scholarly journals, in early 2013 it expanded to include books (and book chapters) and the gray literature (academic doctoral theses, reports from scientific research groups, working papers, etc.). [10]

Scholarly Journals

Information about the 16,000-plus serials indexed in SafetyLit is found in the SafetyLit Journals Database that lists journal title and current publisher, title abbreviation, both the print and electronic International Standard Serial Number (pISSN and eISSN), the range of years the journal has been published, the journal's previous or subsequent titles, and a link to the journal's pages on the publisher's website. Each journal listing includes a link to the OCLC WorldCat find item in a nearby library service. [16]

SafetyLit draws from journals that publish material that has been subjected to peer review. Most articles in SafetyLit are written in the English language or contain titles and abstracts in English. However, the abstracts of some non-English articles are included after translation to English by staff or volunteers. Titles and abstracts in the original language are retained. SafetyLit staff and volunteers regularly perform daily detailed searches of open-access databases such as the Global Index Medicus, PubMed, and Transportation Research International Documentation TRID Transportation Research Database. There are many relevant journals that are not included in these biomedicine and transportation databases. Thus, in addition, many publishers' journal websites are hand-examined (issue by issue). More than 1200 current scholarly journals from many nations are searched to find relevant material. [10] The SafetyLit website provides a listing of the names of more than 200 journals with contents systematically examined each month and a listing of an additional 350 journals that are searched at least once every 3 months. [17] The contents of another 1500 journals are examined at least once per year. [18] [19] SafetyLit provides a page with information about the public database search strategies and journal search frequencies. [20]

Gray Literature

In mid-January 2013, SafetyLit announced that it was accepting submissions of academic doctoral theses on relevant topics (see below). [21] In early February of that year, more than 150 theses from 18 universities had been added.

Controversy

Researchers and policymakers who address controversial safety-related issues have been targets of threats or violence for hundreds of years from those with strong feelings who wish to obstruct certain knowledge for the basis of evidence-based policy. [22] More recently, researchers and their institutions have come under attack for work in the areas of firearms and motorcycle helmets. [23] [24] These sorts of things are known because they have been the subject of editorials in journals and even print and broadcast news stories. However, providers of scholarly information such as SafetyLit have also been harmed by those who disagree with part of its content. [25] Some SafetyLit readers write letters to the agencies and organizations that provide funding for the project. Others take more extreme action to make their point. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have been made against the SafetyLit servers. Other attackers organized their interest groups to subscribe to the SafetyLit email service and then to label the SafetyLit messages as unsolicited spam by using their internet service providers' automated reporting process. This in an unsuccessful attempt to block all users of that ISP from receiving SafetyLit email messages.[ citation needed ]

Some of the topics that bring the most complaints are not what might be expected: [25]

See also

Related Research Articles

MEDLINE is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care. MEDLINE also covers much of the literature in biology and biochemistry, as well as fields such as molecular evolution.

PubMed is a free database including primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez system of information retrieval.

PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), PubMed Central is more than a document repository. Submissions to PMC are indexed and formatted for enhanced metadata, medical ontology, and unique identifiers which enrich the XML structured data for each article. Content within PMC can be linked to other NCBI databases and accessed via Entrez search and retrieval systems, further enhancing the public's ability to discover, read and build upon its biomedical knowledge.

<i>American Psychologist</i> Academic journal

American Psychologist is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. The journal publishes articles of broad interest to psychologists, including empirical reports and scholarly reviews covering science, practice, education, and policy, and occasionally publishes special issues on relevant topics in the field of psychology. The editor-in-chief is Harris Cooper.

<i>Annals of Internal Medicine</i> American academic journal

Annals of Internal Medicine is an academic medical journal published by the American College of Physicians (ACP). It is one of the most widely cited and influential specialty medical journals in the world. Annals publishes content relevant to the field of internal medicine and related sub-specialties. Annals publishes a wide variety of original research, review articles, practice guidelines, and commentary relevant to clinical practice, health care delivery, public health, health care policy, medical education, ethics, and research methodology. In addition, the journal publishes personal narratives that convey the feeling and the art of medicine. Selected articles in the journal are freely available; these include patient-oriented content and Clinical Guidelines.

Index Medicus (IM) is a curated subset of MEDLINE, which is a bibliographic database of life science and biomedical science information, principally scientific journal articles. From 1879 to 2004, Index Medicus was a comprehensive bibliographic index of such articles in the form of a print index or its onscreen equivalent. Medical history experts have said of Index Medicus that it is “America's greatest contribution to medical knowledge.”

BMC Health Services Research is an open access healthcare journal, which covers research on the subject of health services. It was established in 2001 and is published by BioMed Central.

<i>Water Research</i> Academic journal

Water Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on the science and technology of water quality and its management. It was established in 1967 and is published by Elsevier on behalf of the International Water Association. The editor-in-chief is Eberhard Morgenroth.

The Indian Journal of Ophthalmology is a peer-reviewed open-access medical journal published on behalf of the All India Ophthalmological Society. The journal publishes articles on ophthalmology and vision science.

<i>Journal of Biomedical Informatics</i> Academic journal

The Journal of Biomedical Informatics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that covers research in health informatics or in translational bioinformatics. It is considered a premier methodology journal in the field of biomedical informatics. Articles are freely available 12 months after publication. Authors can pay extra for immediate open access at the time of publication. The journal was established by Homer R. Warner in 1967 under the name Computers and Biomedical Research and was renamed beginning with Volume 34 in 2001, when it was redesigned under the leadership of Edward H. Shortliffe as its editor-in-chief. The current editor-in-chief is Mor Peleg.

<i>Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry</i> Academic journal

Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry is a monthly, peer-reviewed, scientific journal published by the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology and Agrochemistry, of which it is the official journal. It was established in 1924 as Bulletin of the Agricultural Chemical Society of Japan, which was renamed to Agriculture and Biological Chemistry in 1961. The journal took its current name in 1991.

Violence and Victims is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering theory, research, policy, and clinical practice in the area of interpersonal violence and victimization, touching diverse disciplines such as psychology, sociology, criminology, law, medicine, nursing, psychiatry, and social work.

Anne O'Tate is a free, web-based application that analyses sets of records identified on PubMed, the bibliographic database of articles from over 5,500 biomedical journals worldwide. While PubMed has its own wide range of search options to identify sets of records relevant to a researchers query it lacks the ability to analyse these sets of records further, a process for which the terms text mining and drill down have been used. Anne O'Tate is able to perform such analysis and can process sets of up to 25,000 PubMed records.

<i>American Journal of Preventive Medicine</i> Academic journal

The American Journal of Preventive Medicine is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal that publishes articles in the areas of prevention research, teaching, practice and policy. Original research is published on interventions aimed at the prevention of chronic and acute disease and the promotion of individual and community health, as well as health services research pertinent to prevention and public health. Papers also address educational initiatives aimed at improving the ability of health professionals to provide effective clinical prevention and public health services. The journal periodically publishes supplements issues devoted to areas of current interest to the prevention community.

The Journal of Biomedical Materials Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journals of biomedical material science. It was established in 1967. In 1974, it absorbed Biomedical Materials Symposium (1971–1974). In 1990, it absorbed the journal Journal of Applied Biomaterials (1990–1995). In 2002, it split into two parts, Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A, and Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B. The two parts are published by John Wiley & Sons.

The PubMed Dietary Supplement Subset (PMDSS) is a joint project between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS). PMDSS is designed to help people search for academic journal articles related to dietary supplement literature. The subset was created using a search strategy that includes terms provided by the Office of Dietary Supplements, and selected journals indexed for PubMed that include significant dietary supplement related content. It succeeds the International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS) database, 1999–2010, which was a collaboration between the Office of Dietary Supplements and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library.

<i>Journal of Biomedical Optics</i> Academic journal

The Journal of Biomedical Optics is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by SPIE. It covers the application of optical technology to health care, biomedical research, and experimental medicine. The editor-in-chief is Brian W. Pogue.

The Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology is a peer-reviewed biweekly journal publishes papers and mini-reviews of new and emerging products, processes and technologies in the area of prokaryotic or eukaryotic cells, relevant enzymes and proteins; applied genetics and molecular biotechnology; genomics and proteomics; applied microbial and cell physiology; environmental biotechnology; process and products and more.

The ASAIO Journal is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering research and development of artificial organs. It is published by Wolters Kluwer on behalf of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO) and the editor-in-chief is Mark S. Slaughter, MD. It was established in 1955 as the Transactions of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs to publish the proceedings of the annual ASAIO conference. It obtained its current title in 1992. The journal publishes monthly.

<i>Journal of Environmental Management</i> Academic journal

The Journal of Environmental Management is a semi-monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on environmental science and quality that was established in 1973. It is published by Elsevier and the editors-in-chief are Raf Dewil, Jason Evans, and Lixiao Zhang.

References

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