Reprint files

	Stephen M. Perle, D.C., M.S. Professor of Clinical Sciences University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic Bridgeport, CT, USA Bridgeport, CT, USA E-mail address: Office phone number: 203 576-4248 Campus address: END 1B Return to Dr. Perle's home page

Organizing Journal Reprints

The Problem

If you are like me, a health care professional or researcher, you have (or will) amass a considerable collection of journal articles. The problem is how to file these so that you can find them easily. Without an efficient system you will end up with piles of papers. You will often have multiple copies of the same paper because when you needed it and you couldn't find it you copied it or asked for a reprint again. The obvious solution is folders in a filing cabinet with topics on the tabs. Great idea but what do you do with an article on, say,. cancer and vitamin C? File it under cancer or vitamin C or both? See the problem? This system avoids many of the problems of cataloging and filing.

First I have to tell you where I learned this system. While a student at Texas Chiropractic College in the early '80s I used to study most nights at Baylor Medical School's library. There was a notice of a free seminar on organizing journal reprints. Having already amassed a large and very disorganized collection of articles I realized that this seminar was for me.

The System

The system is quite simple. As one wishes to file a paper it is given an accession number. Accessions numbers are given sequentially starting with number 1. I use an X-Stamper number stamp. The articles get filed in numerical order and the accession numbers we were told should be put on 3x5 cards labeled with all the topics one wishes to use. I actually went out an bought a copy of MESH so that I would have the appropriate subject headings. Well, personal computers and free internet access to MedLine have made this a much better and easier process.

The Step-By-Step Process

After reading an article you want to store, open EndNote (other bibliography software should work as well but I have not tried it and besides I am committed to EndNote).
Connect to MedLine via EndNote's connect feature
Bring up a search window (mine is defaulted to searching for 2 authors and the year of publication with a Boolean and operation). This usually brings up only a few 1-20 articles
Select the article you have read and import it in to your personal EndNote library
Stamp the article with the next sequential accession number (I have standardized my system to having to increase the number on the rubber stamp just prior to stamping.)
Open the article from your personal EndNote library
Enter the accession number in EndNote's accession number field
Place the article in the back of your file

Advantages to This System

Your collection grows from the back. Using any other system the collection grows from the middle and requires periodic shuffling around for space.
It's easy to file - number order duh.
It's easy to find missing articles.
Easy to search. While you can't just grab a folder on a particular topic you can do all types of searches of your library in EndNote.
No cataloging required. Hey I don't have an MLS. When you load the MedLine file into EndNote the keywords.
Very little typing. You only have to type the last name of two authors and the year of publication. EndNote uploads the entire MedLine record: all authors, title, journal, year, volume, issue, pages, keywords, abstract.
Bibliography bliss - If you write this software, EndNote, will create almost any type of bibliography you could ever want. It makes it easy to change bibliography types when you decide to submit a paper to a different journal than you had originally intended.

Logistics

Put labels on standard Manila file folders from 1-25, 26-50 etc. When folded at the largest scored fold, each will typically hold 25 articles
Use hanging folders with 3 in. box bottoms. These will typically hold 3 Manila folders.
Label the filing cabinet drawers with the range of numbers in each draw.

Getting Started

So you already have tons of papers. How do you convert to this system? If you are a clinician and have the staff its good down-time work. If you are a professor and have a grad assistant or secretary... But if you don't have others to put on the job, my suggestion is to add papers to the system as you use them. So all new papers you read get entered. The way the old collection gets computerized is that whenever you use a paper, most likely you need to cite an "old" paper when writing a new paper or working on a class, you enter it in to this system then. Finally you have to be persistent. Don't let new papers you read pile up, enter them into EndNote and file them ASAP. A little work on the front-end saves a ton on the back-end.

PDFs

Since I first wrote this articles many journals now produce PDFs of their articles. The advent of PDFs has only made EndNote more valuable to me. I still create EndNote records as explained above but now a right mouse click anywhere in the new record brings up a menu that includes the option to Link to PDF. Once one does this there is a link to the PDF of the journal article which when double clicked will open the paper in Adobe Reader.

I hope this helps. It has made my life as an academic so much easier. Let me know if you have any questions or comments on this system. perle@bridgeport.edu

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