STEM Access

Scopus

Today, I’m going to blog about Scopus to follow up on my last post on Web of Science and Cited Reference Search.  Scopus is not as complicated as WoS as it is just one database with its own interface.  Originally, Scopus data only went back to 1996, but they are in the process of adding records going back to 1970 and should be done in a year or two. Just like in WoS, the simplest way to find in Scopus where/wheter an article has been cited is to search for the article and look on the left side to...
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Web of Science

A long time ago, I blogged about Cited Reference Searches and mentioned that Web of Science and Scopus were the two main databases that have this feature.  So, today I thought I would go into more detail about how a cited reference search works in Web of Science and later this week in Scopus. I need to start with a few preliminary comments about Web of Science.  First of all, for a few years Web of Science had an identity crisis and was known as Web of Knowledge because the company decided that the name was too restrictive since...
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JoVE Science Education Database

Just a quick follow up on the last post about JoVE.  I mentioned that JoVE has protocol papers and a Science Education Database.  The Science Education Database gives short videos on how to perform common laboratory techniques and is great for those needing to review for class or even for students to view in a flipped classroom setting. They keep on changing the way they’re organizing the modules, but the ones we have are Basic Biology SE1 General Laboratory Techniques SE2 Basic Methods in Cellular and Molecular Biology Advanced Biology SE5 Essentials of Neuroscience Please let us know if...
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Protocol Papers and the Journal of Visualized Experiments

In the past I’ve talked about the structure of the classic scientific articles, but there are other types of scholarly, peer-reviewed scientific articles.  One of those is the protocol papers.  Because one of the hallmarks of the scientific method is repeatability, knowing how experiments are performed, or the protocol, is important so that other researcher can confirm results or perform similar experiments.  Protocol papers focus on the method of the experiment, and there journals that are dedicated to publishing only protocol papers. One of these journals is the Journal of  Visualized Experiments (JoVE).  But JoVE is not your typical...
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More Controlled Vocabulary

As I mentioned last week, my original theme for the month was to go over controlled vocabulary such as the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) used in Scitation and IEEE Xplore, the Mathematics Subject Classification (MCS) used in MathSciNet, and the Computing Classification System (CCS) used in the ACM Digital Library.  But I decided that there wasn’t enough to say to blog about each one separately. All of them have similar hierarchical structure like MeSH, but without as many tiers.  PACS has up to 5 subheadings, MCS up to 3, and CCS up to 3.  The headings and...
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MeSH Descriptors

Last week talked about chemistry.  Today we talk about medicine.  Specifically, we will discuss Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).  MeSH is an example of controlled vocabulary which we is our topic for this month.  Controlled vocabulary is used in indexes to describe subjects systematically and consistently, and MeSH descriptors are probably some of the most widely used.  It’s no surprise that MedLine, PubGet, PubMed use MeSH since they’re biology related.  But they’re used in Scopus and IEEE Xplore also. MeSH were created by the National Library of Medicine and are updated every year.  Currently there are over 26,000 descriptors and...
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CAS Registery Numbers

Have you ever met a chemist?  I find that chemists are some of the most organized, meticulous people I know.  I attribute it to the fact that if they’re not careful they’re apt to blow themselves up in lab (although some of them do have a pyromania and enjoy setting things on fire on purpose). So true to their organized selves, chemists have assigned a unique number to every chemical substance that is recorded in literature.  Every chemical substance!  That’s more than 66 million substances.  About 15,000 new substances are added each day.  (I wonder if they take the...
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Searching Databases and Driving Cars

With the plethora of databases comes a variety of different interfaces. Some databases might use be accessed using different interfaces. Some interfaces can access more than one database. Most people are creatures of habit:  they find a database they like (usually an important one in their field) and get used to it.  When they have to search another database (or if the database has been bought out by another company), they can often find the different interface confusing.  As a result they sometimes simply don’t conduct the search. I like to assure people that searching in an unfamiliar interface...
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Indexes vs. Electronic Journal Collections: Why aren’t any articles from this journal showing up?

On occasion, I get asked why no articles from certain journals show up when a patron does a search in one of the databases.  Usually the reason is because the patron is searching an electronic journal collection rather than an index. Indexes list articles from journals (and sometimes books and conferences) with their bibliographic information and add extras such as subject information and abstracts.  Usually the abstracts are those provided by the authors, but some indexes actually have professionals read every article and write a summary. When you run a keyword search in an index, you generally are searching...
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Cited Reference Search

In my last entry, I talked about cited reference searches.  What are these exactly? Most people realize that when they find an article that really fits their topic looking at the references listed at the end of article will lead them to more articles which are related to the original topic.  This is a great way to research, but there’s only one problem:  the reference list of a paper will only list other references that are older than the paper itself.  If the paper was published within the last year, then probably the most up-to-date resources are listed, but...
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