IL Step 3: Using Bibliographic Databases Information Literacy

Bibliographic DB: Overview Collection of bibliographic records references to scientific publications Journals, proceedings (books, etc.) in specific disciplines e.g., Biological Abstracts in multiple disciplines e.g., Web of Science, Scopus Digital Library Bibliographic DBs contain rich information Keywords, abstracts, (full-text, citation data) are mostly proprietary Charge usage fees use English as primary language Non-English titles translated to English may have different record format e.g., title vs. original title, author vs. primary author may offer different search interfaces & options Citation Database Information Literacy

Bibliographic DB: Coverage It is important to consider DB coverage before using. Document Type Journals, magazines, books, book chapters, dissertations, etc. Publication Type Scholarly, Popular, Trade, etc. Discipline/Subject Area Math & Physics, Computer Science, Social Science, etc. Time Period 1960-2000, 1990-present, etc. Update frequency: annually, monthly, weekly, daily, etc. Content Brief description (abstract & references) vs. full-text Citation metadata For quality assessment Enhanced search capability (e.g., following the thread) Information Literacy

DB Coverage: Examples Web of Science -Tutorial - Scopus -Tutorial - 90M records (1900-present) 50,000 books, 12,000 journals & 160,000 conference proceedings Multi-disciplinary, high impact scholarly publications Owned by Clarivate Analytics - Sold by Thompson Reuters (started by Institute for Scientific Information) Scopus -Tutorial - 66M records 20M with references (1996-present) & 20M without references (1823-1995) 22,000 multi-disciplinary titles from 5,000 international publishers 20,000 peer-reviewed journals & 3.6M conference papers Owned by Elsevier (a major publisher of international scientific journals) JSTOR (Journal Storage) -Tutorial - 2000 academic journals from 900 publishers Full-text publications in humanities, social sciences, & sciences Operated by JSTOR, non-profit organization Google Scholar 160M records (88% of English scholarly documents on the Web) Multi-disciplinary titles in 30+ document types (varying quality) Information Literacy

DB Searching: Records & Fields DB Record Describes information source e.g., journal article DB Field Contains metadata about the information source e.g., author, title, subject, publisher, publication date, etc. DB Searches Keyword Search – match in any field Emphasis on finding as much information as possible Field Search – search in specific fields Focus on finding only desired information General Strategy Begin with keyword search to find everything about a topic to discover subtopics Use field search To find precise information about specific topics on recalling as much information as possible Field Search red + blue + green (Tie=red) + (Shirt=blue) + (Hat=green) Information Literacy

DB Searching: Options & Tools Wildcards To group words with various spellings and forms e.g., secret* → secret, secrets, secretary, etc. secret? → secret, secrets Quotation Marks Around exact phrases (i.e., exact match) e.g., “longevity secret?”, “longevity factor?” Boolean Operators Connecting words to broaden or narrow a search e.g., secret? AND longevity, (secret? OR factor?) AND longevity Proximity Operators Connecting words that should appear near one another e.g., (secret? OR factor?) NEAR longevity to prevent happenstance occurrence of words “Secret of happiness is love. Longevity has noting to do with it.” Information Literacy

DB Searching: Options & Tools Searchable indexes List of searchable terms (words that appear in DB) e.g., author index, journal index Thesaurus Standardized list of keywords Typically have a hierarchical structure Each term can have Broader term (BT) Narrower terms (NT) Related terms (RT) Equivalent terms (ET) Related Articles Tool for finding “more like this” articles. Offered by some DBs Web of Science → articles that cite at least one document cited by current article Scopus → articles that share same reference, keywords, or authors PubMed → articles that share same words in title, abstract, MeSH terms (keywords) Information Literacy

DB Searching: Search Refinement Too much information Examine non-relevant results Why were they retrieved? Modify the query to filter out non-relevant results Add terms that exclude bad results Use more specific terms e.g. longevity AND secrets → longevity AND secrets NOT myths Search in specific fields e.g., subject, title Too little information Eliminate long phrases (i.e., exact match) e.g., “longevity secrets” → longevity AND secrets Use alternative terms e.g., “longevity secrets” → longevity AND factors, longevity AND research Try broader terms e.g., “longevity secrets” → “long life” e.g., “recombinant DNA” → genetic engineering Information Literacy