Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/81195
SOMATIC RESEARCH able to find the article on the library's computer and print a copy for a nominal fee. If you are still unable to find the full-text article for free and the abstract is compelling, you may choose to pay the subscription fee for a single article and download it. All of this begins with opting in for research-journal alerts. IJTMB.org The MTF publishes a quarterly, free, online research journal targeting massage therapy and bodywork research, education, and practice articles. To sign up for the quarterly journal alerts, go to ijtmb.org and click on the "Register" link across the top of the page. Every article is of direct interest to massage and bodywork therapists, providing you with several articles to queue up for your regular reads. full-text links, and I get to customize the alert. Every week I receive an alert on my specified search topics: chiropractic and manual therapies, complementary and alternative medicine, health-services research, musculoskeletal disorders, and related articles from other journals. Included in the "related articles from other journals" alert are articles found in PubMed. This is the most complete alert for free, full-text articles. alerts, or you may feel overwhelmed by the clutter in your inbox. Other Journals of Interest Here is a list of a few journals worth watching but that require a fee to download full-text articles. To receive table-of-contents alerts, go to these websites: • Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice (www.ctcpjournal.com) The MTF publishes a quarterly, free, online research journal targeting massage therapy and bodywork research, education, and practice articles. To sign up for the quarterly journal alerts, go to IJTMB.org and click on the "Register" link across the top of the page. The drawback to selecting search NCCAM Clinical Digest As mentioned earlier, NCCAM Clinical Digest is also an excellent source for original research, though the articles are limited to the topic of the month. Click on the links embedded in the news summaries, or click on the "Scientific Literature" link and search the PubMed database for articles on the topic of the month. The MeSH terms are preselected, streamlining the search to the specific topic. BioMed Central My personal favorite weekly source for just-published research is BioMed Central (BMC). I love it for two reasons: all of the articles include free, topics such as CAM or chiropractic and manual therapies is the vast array of alerts for articles on modalities or topics outside the scope of somatic therapists. The payoffs include the few articles that include massage and compare massage to the other CAM modalities. Again, you must be willing to slog through a list of unrelated articles to get to the few gems. To register for BMC alerts, go www.biomedcentral.com/logon and click on "Register." You can pick from 222 journals by title, or you may select from a list of topics such as the ones above. Begin by opting in for only one or two topic • InspireHealth Integrated Cancer Care (www.inspirehealth.ca) • Natural Medicine Journal (www.naturalmedicine journal.com) • Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (www.liebertonline.com) SummarY Keep up-to-date with the massage and bodywork research as it is published. You can read an article a day, or an article a week. If you fall off the wagon, just start again. It takes 21 days to develop a daily habit (66 days to change the neurons and make it stick)1 and this is a habit worth your time and effort. Note 1. PsychCentral, "How Long Does it Take an Action to Become a Habit; 21, 28, or 66 Days?" accessed February 2012, http:// blogs.psychcentral.com/adhd/2010/05/ how-long-does-it-take-an-action-to- become-a-habit-21-28-or-66-days/. A licensed massage practitioner since 1984, Diana L. Thompson has created a varied and interesting career out of massage: from specializing in pre- and postsurgical lymph drainage to teaching, writing, consulting, and volunteering. Her consulting includes assisting insurance carriers on integrating massage into insurance plans and educating researchers on massage therapy theory and practice to ensure research projects and protocols are designed to match how we practice. Contact her at soapsage@comcast.net. Celebrate ABMP's 25th anniversary and you may win a refund on your membership. ABMP.com. 55