Retrieval of very large numbers of items in the Web of Science: an exercise to develop accurate search strategies

"The current communication presents a simple exercise with the aim of solving a singular problem: the retrieval of extremely large amounts of items in the Web of Science interface. As it is known, Web of Science interface allows a user to obtain at most 100,000 items from a single query. But what about queries that achieve a result of more than 100,000 items? The exercise developed one possible way to achieve this objective. The case study is the retrieval of the entire scientific production from the United States in a specific year. Different sections of items were retrieved using the field Source of the database. Then, a simple Boolean statement was created with the aim of eliminating overlapping and to improve the accuracy of the search strategy. The importance of team work in the development of advanced search strategies was noted."

(source: Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge, Loet Leydesdorff, Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Ronald Rousseau and Soren W. Paris, Retrieval of very large numbers of items in the Web of Science: an exercise to develop accurate search strategies. El Profesional de la Información 2009;18(5):529-533 / pre-print)

JournalBase - Une étude comparative internationale des bases de données des revues scientifiques en sciences humaines et sociales (SHS)

"Pour la première fois sont ici présentés dans un tableau comparatif les contenus des bases de données qui recensent les revues en sciences humaines et sociales (SHS), du Web of Science (publié par Thomson Reuters) et de Scopus (publié par Elsevier) ainsi que des listes bibliographiques European Reference Index for Humanities (ERIH) (publié par la Fondation européenne pour la Science) et de l'AERES.
Avec quelque 20 000 entrées, c’est une vue quasi exhaustive de la richesse des publications en sciences humaines et sociales qui est enfin apportée par ce tableau. La nomenclature adoptée pour classer les revues par discipline est celle en 27 postes de la Fondation Européenne pour la Science. Les affectations multiples révèlent la multidisciplinarité des revues, assez fréquente en SHS, mais parfois aussi les incohérences des bases de données qui n’ont pas été rectifiées. La recherche a été réalisée en 2008 avec le soutien financier du TGE Adonis du CNRS. [...]"

(source: Michèle Dassa et Christine Kosmopoulos, Cybergeo : European Journal of Geography [En ligne], Dossiers, Les revues en sciences humaines et sociales, mis en ligne le 25 juin 2009. URL : http://www.cybergeo.eu/index22492.html)

Web of Science and Scopus: A Comparative Review of Content and Searching Capabilities

"[] In particular, this review will compare and contrast the content of the two databases by comparing (a) the comprehensiveness in coverage of 110 journals over a broad spectrum of fields to look at their completeness in indexing and their timeliness in updating; (b) the retrieval of searches based on seven departmental affiliations from one university, highlighting the number of articles retrieved, their citation counts and H-indexes (the value of H is equal to the number of papers [N] that have N or more citations); (c) the citation counts for 10 journal articles; and (d) publication counts from six universities. The usefulness of both databases in studying an institution’s research output and aiding in collection assessment/development activities will be discussed. The article will also provide methods that might be useful for extracting information from these databases that could be useful for collection development purposes. In addition, it will focus on the ease of use and understanding of the databases for the average user, capabilities available for searching, and the unique features each offers. [...]"

(source: The Charleston Advisor, Volume 11, Number 1, July 2009 , pp. 5-18(14))

Marlène revient dans ce billet sur le projet JSTOR et sa panoplie de services et fonctionnalités, avant de conclure:

"[...] J'en déduis que les bases de données figées, aux fonctionnalités basiques, non évolutives, ne sont pas une fatalité."

ISEN (Internet Search Environment Number)

The Internet Search Environment Number (ISEN) is for researchers who find it difficult to locate and search relevant, evaluated online databases. The ISEN is the foundation of a portal that comprehensively catalogs the Internet's databases.

Via Catalogablog

L'Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) du JISC est un outil qui permet de comparer - dans le cadre de négociations - des agrégateurs de revues, des plateformes de bases de données ou de e-books. Voir la méthodologie ici.

J'apprends l'existence, via Urfist Info, de Calame, un répertoire de bases de données en Sciences Humaines et Sociales comportant 180 descriptions de bdd.

[ A l'attention des membres de la communauté universitaire UCL et de l'Académie Louvain ]

A partir du 21 septembre 2007, l'accès aux bases de données suivantes via EBSCOHost est gratuit pour une période de test se terminant le 2 novembre prochain:

SocINDEX
SocINDEX with Full Text
EconLit
EconLit with Full Text

Accès ici (sur base de l'adresse IP)

L'EIA (European Information Association) propose une série de guides afin de permettre aux utilisateurs des ressources du site Europa de s'y retrouver (ou de moins s'y perdre).

Via Peter Scott's Library Blog

La nouvelle version de SciFinder* est disponible.

Quelques précisions par rapport à la version antérieure:

* Categorize references—this tool enables you to sort and evaluate information in your answer sets by creating a histogram for easy analysis. Categorize separates related references on the basis of their associated CA index terms. With categorize, you can reassemble the different subsets in unique ways creating opportunities for new insights.
* Save answers—now you can save answer lists of references, substances, or reactions and re-use them later in other SciFinder Scholar sessions.
* Combine answer sets—the combine tool makes it possible to focus on a particular research topic in new ways by combining the substances, reactions, and references in an active answer set with those in a previously saved one. By employing various options of Combine, Intersect, or Remove, you can manipulate and customize the information contained in these combined answer sets.
* Export commercial chemicals records from CHEMCATS® into Excel—create reports listing your favorite commercial sources, including contact information and pricing, for substances of interest. Catalog information is exported into Excel spreadsheets for sorting, manipulation, and reference.
* Explore from substance displays—become more productive by using a substance record display to launch a new search or refine a previous one.
* Print structures in grid format—gain a unique comparative view of multiple chemical structures by printing them side by side in this handy grid arrangement.

Via C.-H. Nyns

(* chimie et sciences de la vie)