Literature Corpus

NIF has assembled a corpus of literature using the Textpresso literature tool (Muller et al., 2008) customized for the NIF. The two major features provided by Textpresso are the ability to search the full text of research papers, not just the abstract, and the development and use of categories of biological concepts and categories that describe or relate objects within the search.

Because of legal restriction, full texts are collected based on open access journals  and articles in BioMed central. In addition, NIF will make available search of full text J. Neuroscience articles according to a licensing agreement between J. Neuroscience and NIF. 

The NIF Literature database provides access to approximately 100,000 neuroscience abstracts and full text articles, indexed from a core set of neuroscience journals  as well as articles culled from keyword searches of PubMed for neuroscience-related terms, allowing neuroscientists to better hone in on content of interest.

Because the NIF Literature archive index requires PDF files, the NIF Literature database is heavily weighted towards articles published after 1995.

Searching NIF Literature:

NIF Literature is accessed through the NIF search interface as one of the core resources of NIF. Literature results are displayed under the Literature tab, with simultaneous search across two literature indices, NIF Literature and PubMed. Searches through the NIF interface take advantage of the NIF Vocabularies to expand or refine searches based on synonyms and related concepts, e.g., super classes, sub classes or parts.

NIF’s Literature tool, Textpresso, returns search results based on relevance rather than by year, author or journal. Relevance is determined by criteria such as co-occurrence of search terms within individual sentences; the more terms that are closely linked within a sentence or group of sentences, the higher the article is ranked. Access to the full article requires an institutional or personal subscription. NIF does not provide access to the article itself.

Search results may also be viewed in the Textpresso interface, which provides the user additional category (e.g. brain region) and filter options for refining a search. One of the most powerful features is the ability to include in a search “buckets” of search terms from the NIF Vocabularies. For example, it is possible to launch a search within Textpresso for “PKC.” After Textpresso returns results for this search, you may refine your search by choosing a category (e.g. brain region). Textpresso results will then highlight your keyword as well as more than 500 brain regions and subregions. Similar searches can be performed for genes, drugs, cell types, diseases and techniques.

Current journals indexed by NIF:

1. Annual Review Neuroscience
2. BMC Neuroscience
3. Brain Research
4. Cereb Cortex
5. Current Opinions in Neurobiology
6. European Journal of Neuroscience
7. Experimental Brain Research
8. International Journal of Neuroscience
9. International Reviews of Neuroscience
10. Journal of Computational Neurology
11. Journal of Neurophysiology
12. Journal of Neuroscience
13. Nature Neuroscience
14. Nature Reviews Neuroscience
15. Neurobiology
16. Neuron
17. Neuroscience
18. Trends Neuroscience
19. Behavioral Brain Function
20. Behavioral Brain Research
21. Behavioral Genetics
22. Behaviour
23. Behavioral Neuroscience
24. BMC Neurology
25. Cerebrospinal Fuild Research
26. Child Adolesc Psychiatry
27. Journal of Brachial Plex Peripher
28. Journal of Neuroeng Rehabil
29. Journal of Neuroinflammation
30. Molecular Degeneration
31. Molecular Pain
32. Neural Development