MeSH on Demand Tool: An Easy Way to Identify Relevant MeSH Terms by Dan Cho.
From the post:
Currently, the MeSH Browser allows for searches of MeSH terms, text-word searches of the Annotation and Scope Note, and searches of various fields for chemicals. These searches assume that users are familiar with MeSH terms and using the MeSH Browser.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could find MeSH terms directly from your text such as an abstract or grant summary? MeSH on Demand has been developed in close collaboration among MeSH Section, NLM Index Section, and the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications to address this need.
Using MeSH on Demand
Use MeSH on Demand to find MeSH terms relevant to your text up to 10,000 characters. One of the strengths of MeSH on Demand is its ease of use without any prior knowledge of the MeSH vocabulary and without any downloads.
Now there’s a clever idea!
Imagine extending it just a bit so that it produces topics for subjects it detects in your text and associations with the text and author of the text. I would call that assisted topic map authoring. You?
I followed a tweet by Michael Hoffman, which lead to: MeSH on Demand Update: How to Find Citations Related to Your Text, which describes an enhancement to MeSH on demands that finds relevant citations (10) based on your text.
The enhanced version mimics the traditional method of writing court opinions. A judge writes his decision and then a law clerk finds cases that support the positions taken in the opinion. You really thought it worked some other way? 😉