BioMed Central launches 'open access' Cases Database & Semantic Search Tools

BioMed Central has launched a new semantically-enriched search tool, Cases Database, which aims to enhance the discovery, filtering and aggregation of medical case reports from many journals. Open access to journal articles published under with Creative Commons licenses which permit text mining enable the literature to be reused as a resource for scientific discovery.

Open access publishing continues to grow, and at a rate faster than the overall rate of growth of science publishing. Aside from the increasing support from funders and institutions for open access to publicly funded research, open access journals are proliferating partly because of the comparatively low costs associated with launching an online-only publication.

Cases Database uses text mining and medical term recognition to filter peer reviewed medical case reports and provide a semantically enriched search experience. The database offers structured search and filtering by condition, symptom, intervention, pathogen, patient demographic and many other data fields, allowing fast identification of relevant case reports to support clinical practice and research. Registered users can save cases, set up email alerts to new cases matching their search terms, and export their results. Cases Database will be free to access and is expected to be of particular interest to practicing clinicians, researchers, lecturers, drug regulators, patients, students and authors.

Publishers including their content in Cases Database can expect increased visibility and usage of their content, as all cases in Cases Database link to the full text version of the case report on the publisher’s website.