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Where to find the papers that use your equipment
Start with Europe PMC, because it searches inside the full text and not just the abstract. Its REST API gives access to 10.2 million full text articles and lets you search by field. One of those fields covers the methods section (METHODS), which is where authors say which bioreactor or TFF system they used.
PubMed works differently. Its Text Words field [tw] covers the title, abstract, MeSH terms and other record data, but not the full text. You will only find papers that name your brand in the title or abstract. Google Scholar indexes papers from most major publishers and repositories worldwide, free and paywalled, and helps you pick up what the others miss.
What to record for each paper
Start a spreadsheet with the very first paper, and read the methods passage before you log it, because the name sometimes belongs to another company. Once you have fifty papers you will want to filter by application or scale. These columns help most.
- Title, journal, year and DOI, copied from the article page.
- The exact equipment or consumable named in the methods, with the model.
- Application, such as antibodies in CHO cells, vaccines, cell therapy or microbial fermentation.
- Working scale, from the lab bench to pilot plant or production.
- Cell line or organism, where the paper gives it.
- The article's licence, so you know what you may reuse.
Do I need the author's permission to list their paper on our site?
Citing it with title, journal, year and DOI link copies none of its content, it just points readers to it. Reusing figures, tables or the PDF depends on the licence. Under CC BY 4.0 you can, as long as you credit the author, link to the licence and note any changes. If there is no open licence, ask the journal.
How to link a paper and what you may copy
Link each paper by its DOI, not by the journal's URL. Crossref recommends this because, if the journal moves, the publisher updates the record and the link keeps working. Show the DOI as a full link with https and doi.org, without a doi prefix in front and without dx in the domain.
Title, journal, year and link is the safe option. Copying the PDF, a figure or a long passage depends on each article's licence, which you will find on the journal page. Under CC BY 4.0 you may reuse the material, commercially too, as long as you credit the author, link to the licence and say whether you changed anything.
The licence also says you may not suggest the rights holder endorses you. If the article carries another licence, or none is stated, link to it and describe it in your own words. Do not copy figures without permission.
Want us to look at how the papers citing your equipment would group by application? Leave your details and we will tell you where we would start.
Review my caseA publications page organised by application
A list sorted by year does little for a buyer. A process lead wants to know whether someone used the equipment for a case like theirs, such as monoclonal antibodies or viral vectors for gene therapy. Group the page by application and, within each one, by scale and year.
Each entry can carry one line of your own saying what the equipment was used for, kept apart from the citation. Add filters if the list is long, and a link to each model's product page. That way the page also works for sales, who can send one application block to a customer who asks.
David Monje, founder of crida studio, led marketing at TECNIC Bioprocess Solutions for four and a half years and acted as the bridge between engineering, product and sales. A publications page needs that same kind of work.
PubMed does not find our equipment. Does that mean nobody uses it?
Not necessarily. In PubMed, the Text Words field covers the title, abstract and other record data, but not the methods section. Equipment is often named only in the methods. Run the same search in Europe PMC restricted to methods, and in Google Scholar, before drawing any conclusion.
Two or three papers on each product page
On each model's page, pick two or three papers that match what visitors are looking for. Recent ones in well known journals of the field, covering different applications, work best. Place them near the specifications, with title, journal, year and DOI link, and add a link to the full publications page.
If the model is new and has no papers yet, do not borrow another model's citations as if they were its own. You can link papers for the product range and say clearly which unit was used. Anyone who reads the paper can check.
What you cannot claim from a paper that cites you
A research group naming your equipment in its methods means they used it. It does not mean they recommend it or that their university backs your brand. Say exactly that, with wording such as “used in” or “cited in”.
- Do not say the authors or their institution recommend the equipment.
- Do not promise customers the same results. Every process has its own cell line, medium and conditions.
- Do not move performance figures from a paper onto the product page as if they were equipment specifications.
- Do not mix citations with GMP or validation claims.
Can we ask customers to cite us in their papers?
You can make it easy for them. Publish the exact company and model names the way you want them to appear, and include them in the documentation that ships with the equipment. Authors then spell them correctly and you find the papers faster. What makes no sense is asking a paper to say anything the authors have not tested.
How to keep the list up to date every month
Save your searches and review them once a month. In PubMed you can create an email alert with the button under the search bar, if you have a My NCBI account, or set up an RSS feed. In Google Scholar, the envelope icon on the results page creates an alert that emails you new papers.
With the Europe PMC API, someone on your team can save one query per brand and model and sort it by publication date with the sort_date option. Results come back as JSON or XML. Always check each new paper by hand before you publish it.
