Plugin for concept-assisted search and navigation on PUBMED

Introduction: Search of MEDLINE using the PUBMED interface still remains a preferred approach for many scientists, even in the presence of alternatives. While PUBMED provides a rich interface for querying, it does not provide deep analysis of the query results to refine queries and build hypotheses. To provide an improved search experience in PubMed, we have developed a Firefox browser plugin called “TPX plus” that enables concept-assisted search and navigation of the MEDLINE database while remaining in the PubMed website. Some of the features of the plugin include identification and highlighting of biomedical concept types like genes, processes, diseases etc. in the PubMed results page; link-outs to dictionary sources for identified terms; a Concept Explorer to view ranked automatically identified concepts in the results as well as use them for filtering/refining the search; deriving related concepts using a statistical concept-associations network; bookmarking and managing articles, storing notes and sharing comments on articles.