"Triples" for information research skills : a multi-disciplinary approach

This paper outlines a new approach to teaching reference/research skills. It was developed for PhD students but has been used successfully for teaching reference and search skills to students on a Masters in Library and Information Studies. It uses example search subjects in groups of three (“triples”), coming from the domains of arts/social sciences, the sciences and engineering, intended to inculcate multi-domain search skills to support cross-domain research . It is supported by a four-stage structured search strategy, summarised on a web page, which begins with quick reference and progresses through general Internet academic and other sources, then general academic databases and finally specialised academic databases/sources

The Effects of Electronic Access to Scientific Literature in the Consortium of Turkish University Libraries

Purpose: To provide some insight to the sharp increase in the scientific publications originating from Turkish academic and research institutions in the last few years. The underlying reasons, widespread access to literature through electronic databases being the most important, are also investigated. Design/methodology/approach: Although it is difficult to gauge national scientific productivity, number of publications in electronic databases which index thousands of scientific journals can give an idea. Web of Science is one of them, and it is provided to the Turkish academic community along with several other databases by the national library consortium. Based on the Web of Science data, a comparative analysis was performed to investigate publications originated from Turkey and other countries. Findings: The analysis revealed sharp increase in publications from Turkish institutions in the last few years. Considering the highest publishing 30 countries out of 190, the increase between 2001 and 2003 is 53.48 percent for Turkey, followed by 34.00 percent for China and 26.87 percent for South Korea. Research limitations: Although one of the largest, only one of several databases was analyzed. Additionally, there are also several other indicators of scientific productivity such as books published and citations received. Originality and value of the paper: The paper provides some insight to the importance of library consortia and efficient literature access it provides to the researchers

A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases

Nowadays, the world’s scientific community has been publishing an enormous number of papers in different scientific fields. In such environment, it is essential to know which databases are equally efficient and objective for literature searches. It seems that two most extensive databases are Web of Science and Scopus. Besides searching the literature, these two databases used to rank journals in terms of their productivity and the total citations received to indicate the journals impact, prestige or influence. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive comparison of these databases to answer frequent questions which researchers ask, such as: How Web of Science and Scopus are different? In which aspects these two databases are similar? Or, if the researchers are forced to choose one of them, which one should they prefer? For answering these questions, these two databases will be compared based on their qualitative and quantitative characteristics.Cite as: Aghaei Chadegani, A., Salehi, H., Yunus, M. M., Farhadi, H., Fooladi, M., Farhadi, M., & Ale Ebrahim, N. (2013). A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases. Asian Social Science, 9(5), 18-26. doi: 10.5539/ass.v9n5p1

The concordance of field-normalized scores based on Web of Science and Microsoft Academic data: A case study in computer sciences

In order to assess Microsoft Academic as a useful data source for evaluative bibliometrics it is crucial to know, if citation counts from Microsoft Academic could be used in common normalization procedures and whether the normalized scores agree with the scores calculated on the basis of established databases. To this end, we calculate the field-normalized citation scores of the publications of a computer science institute based on Microsoft Academic and the Web of Science and estimate the statistical concordance of the scores. Our results suggest that field-normalized citation scores can be calculated with Microsoft Academic and that these scores are in good agreement with the corresponding scores from the Web of Science.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Are We Legislating Away Our Scientific Future? The Database Debate

The ambiguity of the present copyright laws governing the protection of databases creates a situation where database owners, unsure of how IP laws safeguard their information, overprotect their data with oppressive licenses and technological mechanisms (condoned by the DMCA) that impede interoperation. Databases are fundamental to scientific research, yet the lack of interoperability between databases and limited access inhibits this research. The US Congress, spurred by the European Database Directive, and heavily lobbied by the commercial database industry, is presently considering ways to legislate database protections; most of the present suggestions for legislation will be detrimental to scientific progress. The author agrees that new legislation is necessary, but not to provide extra-copyright protections, as database owners would like, but to create an environment wherein data is easily accessible to academic research and interoperability is encouraged; yet simultaneously providing database owners with incentives to produce new databases. One possibility would be to introduce standardized compulsory licensing of databases to academics following an embargo period where databases could be sold at free-market prices (to recoup costs). Databases would be given some sort of intellectual property protection both during and after this embargo in return for a limiting of technical safeguards and conforming to interoperability standards

A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases

Nowadays, the world’s scientific community has been publishing an enormous number of papers in different scientific fields. In such environment, it is essential to know which databases are equally efficient and objective for literature searches. It seems that two most extensive databases are Web of Science and Scopus. Besides searching the literature, these two databases used to rank journals in terms of their productivity and the total citations received to indicate the journals impact, prestige or influence. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive comparison of these databases to answer frequent questions which researchers ask, such as: How Web of Science and Scopus are different? In which aspects these two databases are similar? Or, if the researchers are forced to choose one of them, which one should they prefer? For answering these questions, these two databases will be compared based on their qualitative and quantitative characteristics

Database Support for Research in Public Administration

This study examines the extent to which databases support student and faculty research in the area of public administration. A list of journals in public administration, public policy, political science, public budgeting and finance, and other related areas was compared to the journal content list of six business databases. These databases included ABI/INFORM, Business Source Premier, General Business File, Academic Search Premier, Expanded Academic Index, and International Academic Research Library. The results show that Expanded Academic Index, Business Source Premier, and International Academic Research Library have the most comprehensive holdings of public administration journals

ACADEMIC TEACHERS' PREFERENCES IN SELECTING SCIENTIFIC DATABASES

The objective of the paper was to determine the preferences of academic teachers in the selection of databases of scientific publications. Material consists of the results of research carried out with the diagnostic survey methods carried out with the questionnaire technique among the scientific employees and students of the selected Polish higher schools: University of Life Sciences in Lublin, University of Agriculture in Krakow. 135 scientific employees and 140 full-time students of the second cycle studies participated in the survey. University teachers the most often used publications in scientific journals and publications in the Internet. All students that took part in the questionnaire used scientific publications in the Internet and information included in the Internet. Databases of the Polish scientific publishing houses, Elsevier database, and Google Scholar database are the most useful in the scientific work. Students search for publications only in the Polish databases of publishing houses and Google Scholar base.