1. © 2004 Reviews.com™ 1 Reviews: A Front End to Literature www.reviews.com Bruce Antelman bruce@reviews.com

2. © 2004 Reviews.com™2 Information World has Changed Increased Quantity Traditional journals and books have gone online Open Access journals are gaining traction Labs are putting up results directly on the web Gene databases and other depositories are emerging Improved Accessibility Full text indexes like Google and bibliographic indexes with DOIs have made all these (new) information sources easily accessible to readers

3. © 2004 Reviews.com™3 Too Much Information! Hard for readers to find the best information about what they are interested in Google covers it all but gives too many hits Bibliographic indexes with keyword indexing are more specific but they do not cover all the sources Neither have any indication of quality Which result answers my question best?

4. © 2004 Reviews.com™4 Approaches Increase specificity (quality of search) Many initiatives for using metadata to tag material for better results from search engines One simple way to use metadata: expand subject limiters in Google and Yahoo through their Advanced Directory Search

5. © 2004 Reviews.com™5 Subject limiters in Google and Yahoo through there directories (example)

6. © 2004 Reviews.com™6 Approaches Increase specificity (quality of search) Many initiatives for using metadata to tag material for better results from search engines One simple way to use metadata: expand subject limiters in Google and Yahoo through their Advanced Directory Search But quality remains an open issue

7. © 2004 Reviews.com™7 Is it Worth Reading? Not a new problem Magnitude increasing and will continue to do so Historically readers figured out what to read by: Browsing through library’s stacks or current area Searching through an index Using references in articles as pointers Reading review articles Referring to a citation index Talking to colleagues down the hall In olden times, Reader in British Universities

8. © 2004 Reviews.com™8 Existing STM Review Services Topic Reviews Long: Annual Reviews, … Short: Nature, … Item Reviews Article Reviews: Math Reviews, Journal Watch, Faculty of 1000, … More critical & intellectual because ideas published in articles first Book Reviews, two types: Readers (mostly professionals): Part of existing journals Libraries (for acquisition): Choice, Library Journal, …

9. © 2004 Reviews.com™9 History Information Express’ users frustrated finding quality articles In 1994, Uel J. McMahan, Stanford University scientist, suggests putting review articles online and updating them Afterthought, he said: “I want to click on the reference to get to the articles someone I trust has identified as the best” Thought about movie reviews as a front end to movies “Top 10” movie lists by box office sales similar to citation indexes, similar to document delivery requests Long multi-page movie reviews similar to long review articles like Annual Reviews Short, multi-paragraph movie reviews similar to reviews of articles like Journal Watch Went to ACM, found Computing Reviews

10. © 2004 Reviews.com™10 Computing Reviews An item review service: Covers articles and books in computing Based on 45-year old ACM publication Going online, we are transforming it into a Community of Users that picks the best articles and books and reviews them A model that will be extended to other topic areas

11. © 2004 Reviews.com™11 Benefits of Computing Reviews Readers Pointers to best articles and books in computing Constantly updated overview of what is new and hot Especially valuable since computer science moves so quickly there are few review journals in the field Libraries Brings a new service to readers that helps them use existing resources Leverages subscription and book purchases Helps Acquisitions Librarians choose which books to buy

12. © 2004 Reviews.com™12 Challenges Building Reviews.com Objectivity – Over 1000 reviewers, each with their own point of view, many points of view gets objectivity Currency – Automated production systems speeds up every step of the production process Breadth/Coverage ACM adding titles to their Guide bibliographic database and we are adding other data sources as well 1000+ reviewers – continuous recruiting (reject more than accept) Facts Correct – Each review checked by one of 17 Category Editors, each an invited expert in their field Interesting – Coaching Reviewers and Category Editors to raise standards Ease of use – Have just released version 2 of our readers’ interface that I will show you now

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26. © 2004 Reviews.com™26 New Titles Coming Bioinformatics Reviews Neuroscience Reviews More to follow

27. © 2004 Reviews.com™27 Conclusion Computing Reviews is bringing information discovery to the next level You can give your users a way to cut through all of the data that surrounds them and help them discover new ideas

28. © 2004 Reviews.com™ 28 Reviews: A Front End to Literature www.reviews.com Bruce Antelman bruce@reviews.com