Europe PMC (https://europepmc.org) is a database of research articles, including peer reviewed full text articles and abstracts, and preprints - all freely available for use via website, APIs and bulk download. This article outlines new developments since 2017 where work has focussed on three key areas: (i) Europe PMC has added to its core content to include life science preprint abstracts and a special collection of full text of COVID-19-related preprints. Europe PMC is unique as an aggregator of biomedical preprints alongside peer-reviewed articles, with over 180 000 preprints available to search. (ii) Europe PMC has significantly expanded its links to content related to the publications, such as links to Unpaywall, providing wider access to full text, preprint peer-review platforms, all major curated data resources in the life sciences, and experimental protocols. The redesigned Europe PMC website features the PubMed abstract and corresponding PMC full text merged into one article page; there is more evident and user-friendly navigation within articles and to related content, plus a figure browse feature. (iii) The expanded annotations platform offers ∼1.3 billion text mined biological terms and concepts sourced from 10 providers and over 40 global data resources.
In the field of life sciences there is a growing need for literature analysis tools that help scientists tackle information overload. Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC), a partner of PubMed Central (PMC; National Library of Medicine, 2022), is an open access database of over 41 million life science publications and preprints, enriched with supporting data, reviews, protocols, and other relevant resources. Europe PMC is a trusted repository of choice for many life science funders (Europe PMC, 2022a), offering a suite of innovative search tools that allow users to search and evaluate the literature, including finding highly cited articles, preprints with community peer reviews, or papers referencing a proteomics dataset in the figure legend. In addition, Europe PMC utilizes textmining to help researchers identify key terms and find data and evidence in the literature. First-time users often do not utilize the wealth of tools Europe PMC offers and can feel overwhelmed about how to perform the most effective search. This protocol, describing how to search and evaluate publications and preprints using Europe PMC, demonstrates how to carry out more efficient and effective literature searches using the tools provided by Europe PMC. This includes discovering the latest findings on a research topic, following research from a specific author, journal, or preprint server, exploring literature on a new method, expanding your reading list with relevant articles, as well as accessing and evaluating publications and preprints of interest.
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