Transcript ESRC2014 ProQuest

USING SPECIALIST BIBLIOGRAPHIES,
ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING
DATABASES
… or, why A&I services are important to your research, and how
you can make the most of them
ESRC Research Methods Festival
St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, July 9 2014
Rob Newman (Product Manager)
Rebecca Ursell (Alliance Manager)
Agenda
• Why use A&I?
o What is an A&I database?
o Comparison with other resources
o When and how to use them in the research process
• Use cases
o Basic searching and refining
o Constructing advanced searches and using the
thesaurus
o Saving and repeating searches
• How the content is indexed
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Why use A&I?
from…
ESRC 2014 Research Methods Festival
Why use A&I?
to…
ESRC 2014 Research Methods Festival
Why use A&I?
ESRC 2014 Research Methods Festival
What are A&I databases?
Abstracting + Indexing
o “An indexing service is a service that assigns descriptors and
other kinds of access points to documents”
o Bibliographic databases, Citation Indexes… organized digital
collections of references to published literature
o Used by academic (or other) researchers, for literature searching
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ProQuest social sciences databases
Proprietary databases…
• Sociological Abstracts
• Social Services Abstracts
• IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
• ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
• PAIS International
• Library and Information Science Abstracts
• LLBA (Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts)
…plus licensed
• EconLit
• PsycINFO
• ERIC, Australian Education Index
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Why use A&I?
Addresses key problems
and obstacles as identified
in end user surveys
• Saves you time
• Only includes quality,
credible information
sources
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Social Science Faculty Resource Use
ProQuest
survey May
2014. n=235
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Relevance & comprehensiveness
Relevance of results
5 - Unsatisfactory
4
100%
3
90%
2
80%
1 - Excellent
70%
Comprehensiveness of
results
100%
60%
90%
50%
80%
40%
70%
30%
60%
20%
50%
10%
40%
0%
Library
website
Google
Scholarly
MultiSpecialized General
Scholar /
journal
purpose
subject
citation
Microsoft databases databases indexes
indexes
Academic
(e.g.
(ProQuest,
(e.g.
(Scopus,
Search
JSTOR,
EBSCO, Sociological Web of
Sage)
LexisNexis) Abstracts, Science)
ERIC,
SocINDEX)
Internet
search
engines
(Google,
Bing)
Specialized subject indexes are rated
well, but below scholarly journal
databases, with only a minority ranking
as excellent.
30%
20%
10%
0%
Library
website
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Google
Scholar /
Microsoft
Academic
Search
Scholarly
Multijournal
purpose
databases databases
(e.g.
(ProQuest,
JSTOR,
EBSCO,
Sage)
LexisNexis)
Specialized General
subject
citation
indexes (e.g. indexes
Sociological (Scopus,
Abstracts,
Web of
ERIC,
Science)
SocINDEX)
Internet
search
engines
(Google,
Bing)
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Quality & ease of use
Quality of information (trustworthy
/ authoritative):
5 - Unsatisfactory
100%
4
90%
3
80%
2
70%
1 - Excellent
60%
100%
50%
90%
40%
80%
30%
70%
20%
60%
10%
50%
0%
40%
Convenience / time saving
30%
20%
10%
0%
Library
website
Specialized subject indexes score very well on quality
of information, but less well on convenience.
ESRC 2014 Research Methods Festival
Google
Scholar /
Microsoft
Academic
Search
Scholarly
MultiSpecialized General
journal
purpose
subject
citation
databases databases
indexes
indexes
(e.g.
(ProQuest,
(e.g.
(Scopus,
JSTOR,
EBSCO, Sociological Web of
Sage)
LexisNexis) Abstracts, Science)
ERIC,
SocINDEX)
Internet
search
engines
(Google,
Bing)
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Experience of online research
• How strongly do these statements correspond to your experience of
online research?
100%
Strongly disagree
90%
Disagree
80%
Neither agree nor disagree
70%
Agree
60%
Strongly agree
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
I find it easy to A lot of the
It is important
identify the
results I
not to miss any
relevant
normally get
relevant
material when when I search records when I
researching a
are not
am researching
topic online relevant for my a topic online
subject
I want to be
I commonly
able to enter a use citations
few keywords and abstracts
into a search
to decide
box, rather whether I need
than construct the full text
complex
article
searches
ESRC 2014 Research Methods Festival
Most respondents don’t
want to construct
complex searches, but
also don’t want to miss
any relevant records.
They find it fairly easy to
identify the relevant
material, but tend to
return a lot of irrelevant
results.
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Comparison – controlled for frequent use
% of respondents using resource once a week or more ranking as excellent
80%
70%
Specialist subject indexes
Multipurpose databases
60%
50%
Scholarly journal databases
Google Scholar
40%
30%
There is no statistically
significant difference in
the way subject indexes,
multipurpose databases
and scholarly journal
databases were ranked
when controlled for
frequency of use. Google
Scholar has a different
profile, favoured for time
saving rather than
relevance or quality.
20%
10%
0%
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Using A&I in your research
Broad scan of research in a field
• New research topic – what’s out there?
• Quantity of material
• Research trends - changes over time
Literature review
• Construct detailed searches to find highly relevant material
• Identify subject terms, key authors & journals
Current awareness
• Save searches to re-run at set intervals
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Myth: A&I
databases are
only for expert
searchers
constructing
queries like this!
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Comparison search – coalition formation
• WPSA returns 1281 results. All are relevant and scholarly
• Top 35 results include 30 scholarly journal articles and 5 dissertations.
• These all have “coalition formation” as subject and both “coalition” and
“formation” in article title.
• 31 (89%) are empirically-focused research on political coalition formation;
4 are game-theoretic , and may be of secondary relevance.
• Easy to refine search using filter, suggested subjects etc
• Summon (Dartmouth version) returns over 327,000 results of varying
content types.
• Top 35 results include 20 journals, 2 dissertations, 9 books/book chapters,
2 working papers and 2 conference proceedings (news filtered out)
• 2 items are duplicated within the top 35
• Only 4 (11%) are empirically-focused research on political coalition
formation. 15 (43%) are game-theoretic and may be of secondary
relevance. 16 (46%) are from other disciplines (computer science,
psychology) and are irrelevant to a political science researcher.
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A general Google
search will return
some scholarly
articles, alongside
Wikipedia,
Amazon links etc.
None of this first
page are
empirical political
science studies.
Google Scholar
returns scholarly
papers, but the
initial results
page is mostly
the older articles
which have
been
extensively cited
over many
years. There are
no recent
political science
articles on the
first results
page.
Why use A&I for literature review?
Selection
Discipline-specific content: across a range of content types:
scholarly journal articles, books, reviews, dissertations,
grey literature, newspapers & magazines
• editorial selection gives reassurance of quality material
• allows researchers to search a subject-specific relevant data set
• aims to include all important material within a discipline
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Why use A&I for literature review?
Historical perspective
• Many A&I databases have a long history (started in print)
• Indexes an entire discipline over time
Access to non-digital material
• There is still a significant amount of research not available in
electronic format which will not be picked up by internet search
engines
Transparency of content
• Title lists available
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Why use A&I for literature review?
Indexing & metadata
• Editorial input to aid users in search, navigation, and retrieval
o indexing
o abstracting
o classification
o translation
• Metadata in the language of the discipline
• Only key terms are included (improves precision & relevance)
• Indexing key for filtering through large data aggregates
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Subject searching
Thesaurus & controlled vocabulary
• List of accepted terms, usually in hierarchical thesaurus structure
• Subject specific
• May have other ‘authority lists’ e.g. for company names, personal
names, works of art or literature
Advantages of controlled vocabulary
• Controls synonyms and near synonyms
• Standardizes different vocabulary used
by different authors
• Allows cross searching of multilingual
material
• Transparency of terms & use
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Controlled vocabulary
Browseable
‘Use for’ terms
shown
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Subject searching: Thesaurus search
Hierarchy:
broader,
narrower, related
terms
‘Explode’ function
Combine using
AND, OR, NOT
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Thesaurus search
Explode
“International law”
AND
Explode “Family”
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Thesaurus search
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Saved searches & alerts
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Saved searches & alerts
Current awareness
• Save searches and repeat as
needed
• Set up an alert to run at regular
intervals with any new
documents matching your
search
• Keep abreast of what is being
published on a topic
• Ensure you do not miss any
new and relevant articles when
finalizing a paper for
publication
ESRC 2014 Research Methods Festival
Human vs machine indexing
Advantages of human indexers
• Lateral thinking
• Diverse skills - abstracting,
translating, classifying
• Understand user needs
Advantages of machine indexing
• Speed!
• ongoing improvement and
consistency
• greater insight into the
vocabulary
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Indexing steps
Determine what
document is about
Select concepts
that would be of
interest to users
• Special attention is paid to titles, headings, introduction, conclusion,
abstracts and keywords (if available)
• What a document is about is more important than words used by
author
• What aspects of the documents will our users be interested in? Why
would any one of our users be interested in this document?
• Consider subject area of database, e.g. for a social sciences database,
social sciences concepts will be of more interest than others
• The concepts selected should be as specific and precise as possible
Translate concepts
into controlled
vocabulary terms
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Management of controlled vocabularies
A&I databases generally index a discipline over an extended period
 term use changes over time – through culture, fashion, or
knowledge development
 Terminology around mental disability
Mental retardation > learning disability > intellectual disability
Sociological Abstracts Thesaurus: nonpreferred terms reference previous term
usages:
Gender Differences (1984-1985)
USE Sex Differences
Hobbies (1978-1985)
USE Leisure
Free Time (1963-1985)
USE Leisure
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Summary
A&I gives you….








A relevant dataset
Scholarly material only
Indexing in the language of the discipline
Known search parameters
A view of pre-digital material
Transparent search construction
Regular updates
Consistency of search results over time
ESRC 2014 Research Methods Festival
One final survey finding - experience of online research
% of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing, by frequency of use of
specialist subject indexes
100%
Once a week or more
95%
Once a month or more but less than
once a week
90%
Rarely/never
85%
80%
Those frequently using
specialist indexes are
much more likely to find it
easy to identify relevant
material.
75%
70%
65%
60%
55%
50%
I find it easy to
A lot of the
It is important
I want to be I commonly use
identify the
results I
not to miss any able to enter a citations and
relevant
normally get relevant records few keywords
abstracts to
material when when I search
when I am
into a search decide whether
researching a are not relevant researching a box, rather than I need the full
topic online
for my subject
topic online
construct
text article
complex
searches
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THANK YOU
…. any questions?
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.proquest.com