PubKeeper is an Internet-based tool that assists project leaders in documenting scientific research publications for their team members/project participants. The system relies on a custom-made search that is built with support from our team and stored within your account. PubKeeper takes those search criteria and submits them to the PubMed database and then retrieves all publications that are associated with the team members within that search.

PubKeeper adds value in that it allows you to save search criteria across an unlimited number of mentor-mentee pairings and uses those criteria to search for publications for those pairings in a fraction of the time it would take you searching all the pairings individually on PubMed. While setting up the search criteria initially takes a bit of time, all subsequent searches will be much quicker to submit, therefore saving you more and more time as your project matures.

PubKeeper was primarily designed to reduce the burden for coordinators of science training grants. In our work, we often see coordinators struggle to keep accurate publication records for trainees who have participated in their program. The process typically involves the coordinator looking up each individual trainee (current and prior) one­-by-one in PubMed. This tool was designed to make that process faster and more accurate.

The tool would likely be useful for any other role aiming to search, save, and analyze PubMed citations for their team. For example, department chairs could use PubKeeper to document the success of faculty members co-authoring papers with students who completed research internships in their labs. Research PIs looking to document all scientific research papers associated with different team members within their lab may also find PubKeeper useful.

The place to start is on the "Searches" page. This portion of the system stores each of your mentor-mentee pairs that will ultimately be submitted to PubMed. In most cases, our team has already pre-loaded the mentor-mentee pairings we have for your project.

There are only 4 steps to follow in using PubKeeper: 1) Setting up/editing your search criteria, 2) One-click submission of those criteria to PubMed, 3) Reviewing your search results, and 4) Transferring the correct search results to your Publications folder.

Search criteria are the backbone of PubKeeper, and the stronger your search criteria the better the system will work for you. Each record within your search criteria consists of five variables: 1) Trainee's name,2) Mentor's Name,3) Start Year for Training,4) End Year for Training,and 5) Affiliation. Submitting the combination of all five variables helps increase the accuracy of the search. Since the system searches based on PubMed's data, it is best to have mentor and trainee names in the format of last name, followed by first initial(s). For example, the query will be more accurate if you search for "Smith M", instead of Meghan Smith. To reduce the number of false results the system returns, it is always wiser to include the mentor/PIs name in the same format: last name followed by first initial.

Yes. The system has a built-in upload feature, as well as a downloadable Microsoft Excel template to further guide you. The most important step to remember is to save your upload file in CSV format. If you're comfortable saving Excel spreadsheets in CSV format, you should have no problems using the system's upload feature!

The system is currently designed to only search one mentor as part of a pairing. In the cases where trainees have more than one mentor of record, you'll need to enter the trainee separately with each unique mentor. The system will store the publications by pairings and may return the same citation, if all parties are co-authors. Our team is working to better address these unique situations.

If you don't know the mentor's name for a trainee, you can still enter a search record for that trainee without a mentor. There is a special checkbox to Indicate that the trainee has no mentor associated with him/her. In this case, every publication the trainee has co-authored at the institution you listed will be returned. Since many names are common, project leaders are encouraged to include BOTH the mentor AND trainee names when possible. The use of both will reduce the number of false results.

After submitting a search, the results of that search are stored for your review on the Results page. The page temporarily holds the most recent results of your search and allows you to Individually edit or delete publications that are incorrectly associated with the mentor-mentee pairings. Depending on the specificity in your search, false positives could be part of your results. Users have the opportunity to review and remove these false positives before storing them permanently in their account.

The "Publications" page Is where your correct citations will be stored. Once you have reviewed the results on the "Results" page and deleted all false positives, you can then move all correct citations to your permanent folder for further analysis and downloading. The "Move to Publications" button positioned at the bottom of the "Results" page is what will activate this feature. Note that citations are not downloadable or able to be further analyzed until you have reviewed them and moved them to the "Publications" page.

Yes. Your citations are able to be downloaded from the "Publications" page. Downloads are saved in Microsoft Excel format. Citations are also downloadable into a format that replicates a required table for NIH progress report. You can access this feature on the "Publications" page using the "Report" feature.

The Dashboard feature (found on the "Publications" page) allows users to see a few figures based on the citations stored. These figures visually display the number of publications for trainees and mentors. Each has a filter feature that allows users to adjust the figures for specific years. Figures are also downloadable in several graphic formats.