Bims is a rapid dissemination system for new
papers in PubMed. Bims is powered by human selectors acting as machine
teachers.
How does this benefit preprints?
We expect that PubMed will increase its coverage of preprints. A
rapid circulation system like bims will amplify the timeliness
advantage of preprints.
It is harder for preprints to reach readers as they are not
classified by subject in the same way as journal articles
are. Bims helps to bridge the gap.
Background information on current practices
1993
Thomas Krichel published the
world’s first online electronic
economics working paper.
1997
His continued efforts lead to the
RePEc project. It enabled the
survival of economics working
papers.
1998
He founded the
NEP: New Economics Papers
project. It circulates the latest
adivitions to RePEc’s working paper stock into weekly
subject-specific reports curated by selectors.
2004
He created
ernad, a special software for maintaining NEP reports.
2013
He started to refactor ernad so it could apply to various
document collections.
2017
He persuaded Gavin McStay to direct a project to
apply ernad to PubMed. Now we have “bims: Biomed News”.
2020
PubMed started to index some preprints. Bims became a
rapid circulation tool for them.
As evident from the graph,
keeping users is easy. Marketing bims to new users is hard.
Nothing even remotely like it existed before.
It flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
We can’t instantaneously demonstrate how it would work for a
new user.
We lack prestigious backers.
The ideal outcome or output of the project
In about 20 years many biomedical researchers will maintain a bims
report. It will be part and parcel of being research active.
Bims is a pioneering example of an expertise sharing system.
The aggregate of all reports can give a hint about the quality
of papers. It would be something like a crowd-sourced evaluation.
Overview
Description of the intervention
We continue to recruit new
users. Unless we get sponsorship for a server, we can’t move to new
ventures.
Plan for monitoring project outcome
Project outcomes are publicly
available. We monitor reports manually at this time. As bims grows,
Machine-aided monitoring will be an interesting challenge.
What’s needed for success
Additional technology development
build report home pages and rankings;
improve presentation of PubMed records;
bring machine learning to first issues;
improve the machine learning;
disseminate report issues by email lists;
build a system inviting authors of papers selected for a report
to join a mailing list for that report;
We could use a preprints dataset. But needs to interoperate with
PubMed. We need to highlight to bimsers any published paper
that appeared as a preprint before in the report.
Funding
We urgently need funding for a
server. Funding for software development would accelerate our
progress.