Hello, everybody.
This is Peter Cooper from the NCBI.
Today's Minute will be on the NCBI Bookshelf: Textbooks for Free!.
During the webinar if you have a question, please type it in the questions pod.
I will try to answer the questions.
I am not going to be presenting, Rana Morris will be presenting.
At the end we will be able to address some of them orally and Stacy Lathrop is here from
Bookshelf to help answer them.
If there are questions we don't get to, in fact all questions, will be put into a document
linked to our webinars and courses page.
Slides, supplementals and Q&A documents will be on the FTP site.
I will turn it over to Rana Morris.
Morris.
Thanks for joining us today.
Today will talk about textbook that are available on the NCBI bookshelf, how they get there,
and maybe how you can have your textbook on the bookshelf as well.
Since 1999 NCBI has worked with publishers and authors to provide an additional way for
readers to access their products.
The NCBI Bookshelf also called Books for short houses books reports documents and other literature-based
media on life sciences and health related topics.
The specific topics or scope was selected by our parent organization, the U.S. National
Library of Medicine.
The Bookshelf collects and makes available only fulltext works not abstracts.
And they are all in English.
One of the things that NCBI is known for are links provided between related pieces of information
within and between resources throughout NCBI.
We do this to provide a way for users of our site to learn and discover more about their
topics of interest since many of our databases involve biological data, it was natural to
provide links between our databases and to biological and health-related textbooks and
other books on the Bookshelf.
These are a large number of databases that we have in various domain fields.
We've long been known for our literature databases, particularly PubMed and PubMed central or
PMC.
We've also maintained biological sequence databases for nucleotides and protein since
1990 and have added other sequence related databases as well as those housing data related
to genes, protein structure and activity, and chemicals.
And more recently, have added several health and clinically focused databases to our suite
of resources as the years in scientific research has progressed we are adding more and more.
The NCBI Bookshelf or Books database is another literature database that can connect to all
the resources.
The link to a lot of the basis science information is perhaps one reason why textbooks have been
so successfully added to the NCBI system.
So why textbooks?
In fact the NCBI Bookshelf started in 1999 with a single book.
In addition of one of the most respected molecular biology books.
The third edition of molecular biology of the cell.
By Alberts, Johnson, Lewis, Raff, Roberts and Walter.
The text was submitted to us for inclusion in the NCBI Bookshelf by Garland publishing
with the blessing of the authors.
Recently we caught up with Bruce Alberts who relayed to us that all of the authors of the
molecular biology of the cell were pleased when Garland publishing decided to post the
third edition of our textbook on Bookshelf.
And we were especially happy that this free resource has been heavily used, contributing
an important U.S. effort to spread science to students across the globe.
In addition to molecular biology of the cell, several all other extremely popular textbooks
were added early on, including Berb, Tymoczko and Stryer's biochemistry.
Barons Medical Microbiology, and Walker, Hall, and Hurst clinical methods.
These are considered classic text books which continued to be well-regarded and are still
used today.
A quote from one frequent user of these books, a professor teaching graduate and professional
life science and clinical courses, mentioned that I grew up with Stryer's Biochemistry
and Alberts molecular biology of the cell.
All you need to add is Lewin's Genes and I'd never leave my computer.
But seriously I've recommended the NCBI Bookshelf to my students, included links to the textbooks
in syllabi, and incorporated graphics and tables with attribution in lectures for over
12 years now.
Having access to free, high quality textbooks is key to being able to meet the needs of
my graduate, medical and PA students.
The online version of these texts include all features of the hard copy books.
Including graphics, images and tables.
Which are some of the most heavily viewed sections of these books.
But some say these are old.
Are they still useful or at least are being used?
In fact, they are.
In January 2018, hundreds of thousands of people were accessing and spending time looking
through and reading these text books.
These four are the current most popular and used entries on the NCBI Bookshelf.
Okay, so faculty who have grown up with these classic texts may feel comfortable with them.
But what about students newly exposed to these disciplines in their undergraduate studies?
Why are they still accessing these classic text.
Here's a quote from an undergraduate biochemistry major that is representative of what we heard
from students.
Shawn says I can't afford to spend $350-$400 for a single textbook.
Even if I could, carrying around is a pain in the neck, literally.
Being able to look things up on my laptop or cell phone or anywhere my study group happens
to be is the only way of got through my biology courses.
And unlike what is on most of the web, I know I can trust what I find at the U.S. National
Library of Medicine.
The cost factor as well as the platform for textbooks are both important factors in student
usage of textbooks.
In a blog post on the Wiley network by the library director of the Western Michigan University
school of medicine she explored students preferences and concluded that overall, we know learners
sometimes prefer print, and other times they prefer the electronic version but generally,
surveys on the subject seem to be in agreement that having access to both an electronic and
print textbook copy is optimal.
At the NCBI Bookshelf we have had some new textbooks added to our inventory in recent
years.
And in fact one of them, the essentials of glycobiology, was unique in that it was conceived
from the outset by its editors, publisher and NCBI as a book that would be published
simultaneously in print by Coldspring Harvard press and also made available in fulltext
online at NCBI Bookshelf.
The editors and publisher hope that this would serve as a worldwide model for an open education
vision.
They recently provided a quote to us.
We are happy to have collaborated with NCBI staff whose skills and efficiency ensured
our book would be discoverable and freely accessible to researchers, instructors, students,
and others after simultaneous release in print and fulltext online, with online-only updates
available on the NCBI Bookshelf.
We were very happy to work with Ajit Varki and John Inglis on this project.
But why would other publishers want to consider this type of model?
Why would publishers be interested in making textbooks freely available for the customers?
In a white paper published by Springer Nature in November 2017 called the OA effect, how
does open access affect the usage of scholarly books.
They revealed that open access, which go even further than free online textbooks, I\are
downloaded seven times more than any others in the first year of publication.
Are cited 50% more over four years.
And are mentioned online 10 times more over three years.
Essentially, there is a significant amount of free advertisement and marketing that organically
grows by making books freely available on the Internet.
This dramatically increases the potential in realized audience for these books.
In a blog post exploring the data in this white paper, books and the OA effect, one
publishers perspective, they mentioned that in addition to free advertising and expanded
audience which benefited the publisher, two other groups seem to strongly support this
movement for free online open access book availability.
Funders or sponsors were motivated by specific ethical considerations that publicly funded
research should be open for the public to read.
They were also interested in fulfilling their and their authors expectations for finding
mechanisms to reach a larger audience.
Authors motivations included improving access to research information, enhancing dissemination
to a wider, broader audience, and also providing a way for students to be impacted by their
work at low cost.
The links to both the white paper and the blog are up there on the slide.
At NCBI we can help you do all of this.
https://oaspa.org/books-oa-effect-one-publishers-perspective/ https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/books/the-oa-effect
What the NCBI Bookshelf can do for you.
So here is what we hope to do.
Make your textbook findable and usable for anyone, anywhere, it's on the Internet.
Optimize indexing of your book in Google and in PubMed to make it easy to find.
Enable viewing in any web browser by scrolling Webpage styles and we also have an e-book
style PubReader which makes the book easier to read.
We also hope to expand your audience to more than just college classes who have already
adopted your textbook.
Because they can access it as well.
Here is the view of Catherine Jenkins who is the open access book workflows coordinator
at the publisher Springer Nature has submitted many books available on the NCBI Bookshelf.
The NCBI Bookshelf offers an additional route for wider discoverability for our open access
books and Wellcome-funded OA chapters and helps to direct traffic through these to the
text hosted on our own platform SpringerLink.
The HTML display on the device agnostic platform is user-friendly and renders our books and
easily navigable sections to create a best in class online reading experience.
We value our collaboration.
So to summarize, NCBI Bookshelf can increase discoverability of your text and provide a
link to help readers find your own site and resources.
And we are a good collaborative partner who is able to present your work online for a
great reader experience.
Are you interested?
What do you need to know about getting your book on the NCBI Bookshelf?
Please keep in mind the scope of the works as specified by the U.S. National Library
of Medicine.
We take books about life sciences and health related topics and they must be in English
and need to be in fulltext, not just abstracts or citation.
Who can apply to have their book included in the NCBI Bookshelf?
The application to include the book must be driven by the copyright holder of the text.
However, that copyright holder needs to make sure that all participating members of the
team agree on this submission including authors, editors, publishers, funders and sponsors.
So to begin the application process you can download an application from the NCBI website.
There's also, for new submitters, a publishers application to fill out.
Once those are filled out, you can submit it to the Bookshelf via email which I will
provide shortly.
It is important also to provide details of the work including the title and an abstract
for the book as well as bios for the editors and authors.
And a copy of the book for review.
For printed books, there should either be two hard copies or in an electronic PDF version
of the book.
For e-books you can send either the electronic files or the URL for accessing these files.
Actually if you just go to the Bookshelf homepage.
You can find links to helpful information includig a whole section for people who want
to have their books on the bookshelf.
Including a whole set of documents on how to apply.
there is information for people who want to learn how to use the bookshelf.
Including a quick start guide.
And FAQs that answer common questions that people want to know.
Can I use figures from the book?
How do I cite books from the Bookshelf ? Can a publisher also provide their work on other
sites in addition to the bookshelf?
By the way, the answer is yes.
So in conclusion we've got a couple of direct URLs for you.
The NCBI's Bookshelf homepage you just saw, as well as links to other helpful documentation.
These are linked directly on the homepage from the Bookshelf.
Here is the direct link for the information for authors and publishers and how to apply.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/about/publishers/ If you have additional questions or inquiries
you can reach the NCBI Bookshelf staff directly at this email, bookshelf@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
We would like to finish with a place where you can go to learn more about any of our
resources.
The NCBI Insights blog.
The NCBI YouTube channel.
And for any questions , general questions about NCBI, you can always send it into info
at NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV address.
Even for the Bookshelf you can send it there and we can route it over to the Bookshelf
people as well.
Thank you for your attention.
We now have some time for some questions that you have written in the chat pod.
And the head of the NCBI Bookshelf group, Stacy Lathrop, is here and she can answer
your questions.
This is Peter Cooper again.
We have one question so far.
This is directed to Stacy.
Would you be interested in a previous edition of a text if a new addition has already been
published?
Thank you for your question.
We do accept previous editions.
We do prefer the most recent addition.
We have some older editions so if it's not the newest edition, we will take the next
or second to most recent one.
Thanks.
Here's a question.
How many books are on the NCBI Bookshelf?
We now have over 6000 books in Bookshelf.
I do not have the exact number but I can provide that, and I could do a search.
So the easiest way to see how many books we have on Bookshelf would be to go to our browse
titles page.
I am clicking on it here.
Some of our books appear in our archives so they are not in our default browse or search.
This is usually for clinical content because we do also have a lot of systematic reviews
and clinical guidelines where the currency is important for our agreements we do not
make these available by default.
So the complete number of titles we have, 6042 titles.
And we are pretty much adding between five and 20 per week.
Thanks, Stacy.
Here's another question.
Is there an iPad, iPhone app for the Bookshelf?
We do not currently have an iPad or iPhone app.
What we do have is what we call a PubReader version which I can actually show you here.
This is actually a report rather than a textbook.
But it will show you what we have.
If you click on views to pub reader, it's an HTML 5 page.
You can do a find within the book but you can't search across the resource.
The view looks different on a PC, it is kind of device-smart.
So if you are on an iPad, it will look pretty similar to this.
And then on the iPhone it doesn't scroll by page it will just scroll down the page.
It's a little bit different on the iPhone.
Which I can't show you, unfortunately.
Okay.
Thanks.
This will be the last question.
Can students download the e-books?
Whether or not students can download the e-books is dependent on the agreement we have with
the publisher.
So if the publisher agrees to participate in our open access subset, which some publishers
have, then you can go to our FTP and download the entire XML files.
It's also whether or not you can download the PDF version of the book is also dependent
on the agreement.
Many do provide us to provide the PDFs but not all of them.
It is dependent on agreements with the publisher.
So let me show you a book where we have permission to download the PDF.
I'm not going to choose a textbook, let me do this one.
The handbook of eHealth Evaluation.
I'm going to move to the PDF.
You can download the PDF to read while you are not connected.
And you can also switch to the classic view.
I can show you where it is in the classic view.
Again here have the PDF version for download.
I can show you where the open access subset is so that you can look where to find that.
So you would go to our open access subset.
And then you would go to NLM LitArch FTP service, there is a number of clicks, I"ll go to Last
Modified, there is an Excel file that shows all of the content that we have.
Available for download.
These are all the book titles.
It shows you the file directory by which you can download the content.
Okay.
Thanks, Stacy and everyone for coming.
Let's go ahead and conclude the webinar and we will see you next time.
Thanks for coming.
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