Pharmacovigilance: weekly drug monitors
Search for new papers on a drug every week, across six sources, and see exactly what was searched.
Setting up a monitor
- Open New Task, choose Drug safety, then select Weekly monitor. You can also use the Monitors tab.
- Name the monitor and the drug.
- Tick the sources to check each week.
- Add one or more searches. Leave a search empty to search the drug name.
- Choose the schedule and your criteria, then save.
Sources and searches
A monitor can search PubMed, Europe PMC, Preprints, Crossref and OpenAlex, and can watch ClinicalTrials.gov for new trial results and changes.
Each monitor can hold several searches. Each search picks its own sources. Turn on Different wording per source to write a separate search for each source.
Select Test search to see how many papers each source finds, before you save.
On the monitor's page, the searches list shows the exact search sent to each source, with Copy beside it, and how many papers each found last time.
Duplicates and papers you've seen
The same paper often appears in several sources. Each run shows how many duplicates were removed, and how many papers were already seen in earlier weeks. You only review each paper once.
How Crossref and OpenAlex differ
Crossref matches loosely, so we keep only papers whose title or abstract matches your search.
OpenAlex looks back 90 days by publication date, to catch papers that were indexed late. Papers already seen are never read again.
Retractions
The Retractions section lists any paper the monitor has seen that was later retracted, with the date and reason when they're known.