DALLAS, August 11 -- With the debut of its new World Wide Web (www) site, medical news from the American Heart Association will be more accessible than ever.
The site, AHA Journals Online ( http://www.ahajournals.org), which goes online August 11, provides full text and graphics for the five American Heart Association journals and features sophisticated keyword-searching capabilities, a link to MedLine abstracts and hyperlinks to other major scientific journals. "The AHA already hosts one of the most visited sites on the Web for consumers and scientists," says Rodman Starke, M.D., executive vice president of science and medicine at the American Heart Association. "Now AHA Journals Online gives virtually instant access to an unparalleled breadth of information available around the clock and from one central location. We are proud to have created today's single most important gateway to the world's leading heart disease and stroke resources."
Additional services available free to registered users include e-mail notification prior to the online release of the latest issue of a publication and complete tables of contents. Overseas subscribers -- who currently wait several days or weeks to receive their journals -- will especially benefit from this service.
The site also provides advanced features to ease online research. The Researcher Alerting Service notifies subscribers by e-mail when material of particular interest to them (based on a personalized profile) is published in the American Heart Association journals. AHA Journals Online supports a "cut and paste" feature that organizes key information in an article for export to citation management software, sparing users the need to re-key references. Readers can cross-reference and connect directly with the full text of referenced articles, even if they are not subscribers to the hyperlinked journals. An archive with the full text and graphics of the past three years of AHA journals will be available in 1999.
All users of the internet will receive free online access to all five AHA journals until the end of 1998. After this year, subscriptions to the online version of each journal will be free with a paid subscription to the corresponding print journal.
Pay-per-view access is available for non-subscribers, enabling them to look at any one online issue for 24 hours. Online-only subscriptions will also be available, and libraries will be able to sign up for site licenses.
"With the debut of AHA Journals Online, the American Heart Association continues its tradition as a premier provider of the highest impact medical information," says Starke. "I encourage everyone interested in these fields to visit the Web site at http://www.ahajournals.org." The site is also accessible through the American Heart Association's Home Page at http://www.americanheart.org.
The five AHA journals are:
- Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association
- Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association
- Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association
- Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association
- Circulation Research: Journal of the American Heart Association