[HSF] Paper Journals in an Internet age.

[prasannasimha]

For me it is very plain and simple. If I were to subscribe to ATS, JTCVS 
and EJTCVS, I would have to spend nearly Rs 10,000/= approx per month 
and that is impossible for me. So I rely on the Hospital Library which 
gets journals at its own time depending on subscriptions and vagaries of 
airmail. We have a thing called Helinet.This is a system where our 
hospital subscribes via our Health university (we have a single 
university for all medical colleges in Karnataka state) to an Internet 
based service called HELINET through which we can access certain 
journals via things like science direct , Ovid etc but unfortunately the 
only cardiac surgery journal is ATS and that too its payment (and hence 
access) is a bit erratic. I usually get articles of interest via many 
kind souls who send them over to me when I ask via email and I 
acknowledge their altruism in helping me out. There are many journals 
that are free after varying amounts of time. I can get access say after 
6 months or a year and some are free access for India (for Eg Lancet / 
NEJM etc). Unfortunately the free access system (after a period of time) 
does not exist for cardiac surgical journals except a couple.
The whole process of journal writing etc are to allow dissemination of 
Knowledge and I cannot see why it has to be locked down after say 6 
months or a year. I appreciate that journal publishing companies have to 
make profits but they should allow free access at least after some time. 
The contributors and editors have done it for gratis and they should 
allow access after some time. This would increase the journal's prestige 
and impact factor anyway.
All I have is a few old dusty copies of some earth shaking articles for 
eg Lillehei's original cross circulation paper and Hillel Laks "Laks 
suture" (fenestrated ASD for Fontan's) etc. I hold on to these.
Then there is a thing called Amedeo which sends interesting articles 
(the titles and links to PUBMED) weekly which I find useful and PUBMED 
is great for doing literature searches.

I remember taking around 50 disks of Silver Platter and searching Index 
Medicus or worse the huge bound Journals of Index Medicus that I had to 
wade through when I did my MS(Gen surg) and MCh(Thoracic) degrees. I had 
to wear a mask and cap while I rummaged through all those books. My MS 
thesis was on gall stones and since I read every reference that I 
quoted, I was searching in the really old archived section of Grant 
Medical College (which is around 170 years old and so had most of the 
really old journals). Since photocopying was not very prevalent and 
expensive , most of these used to be read and the article summarized in 
a note book.I used to have a carbon paper copy of each page while 
writing. Writing a thesis was actually involving cut and paste (we used 
to write it in sections and then actually cut out portions and paste 
them on sheets) -I still remember Jimmy Carter getting one of the 
original word processors (basically what we could call as an electronic 
typewriter) and when I saw my first one. I said Wow it can justify edges 
and we can correct the lines prior to typing using a preview option. My 
first thesis was written when I was doing my MBBS  - (I had got a 
research grant as a first year medical student - a rare thing in India 
those days) and typing on a manual typewriter was such a pain and 
getting some one to type who could understand medical terminology was a 
bigger pain !! At that time photocopying was such a laborious process (I 
am sure many would remember the old manual photocopiers involving a 
frame with toner that used to be shaked and the margins of the 
photocopier surface had to be wiped etc) Writing it down was easier !!
The final indexing was a tremendous pain invovling flash cards and 
indexing cards !!
Today we can do it all in a click of a button !!!
Dr Frater could probably tell about his tribulations  in his time !!
Prasanna
Michael Firstenberg wrote:
> I used to like the idea of entire bookselves filled with Journals - 
> now they just take up tons of space.  Since, for the most part the 
> internet and PDF access (at least to recent stuff) is easy - does 
> anyone keep this stuff anymore?  if so why?
>
> Am I just being sentimental for the old days?
>
>
> -michael
>
>
> HAPPY NEW YEAR to all
>
>
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