Biology Article Retrieval from Various Databases: Making Good Choices with Limited Resources.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/istl2021Abstract
If the top tier indexing resource in a discipline is not available on an ongoing basis for undergraduate student use, can acceptable article retrieval be obtained using other available resources or combinations of resources? This paper examines a single search term comparison of the biological research literature retrieved from BIOSIS Previews as well as eight other databases: BasicBIOSIS, ArticleFirst, ECO, ProQuest, WilsonWeb, SciFinder Scholar, HighWire, and MEDLINE. Comparison is also made with results from the recently available beta version of Google Scholar. A combination of databases yielded a result rate of 59% of the most recent eight years of BIOSIS results. A 51% return rate compared with BIOSIS could be obtained from searching only two major interfaces, the FirstSearch provider for ArticleFirst and ECO along with SciFinder Scholar. Google Scholar provided a 56% retrieval in comparison with the most recent BIOSIS results. A significant benefit of the Google Scholar search was the sizable number (N=69) of additional articles retrieved that were not found in BIOSIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Downloads
References
Acharya, A. 2004. Thursday, October 18, 2004: Scholarly pursuits. GoogleBlog. [Online]. Available: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2004/10/scholarly-pursuits.html [November 24, 2004].
American Mathematical Society. 2004. About MathSciNet. [Online]. Available: {http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/help/about.html} [November 24, 2004].
Blake, M. 2004. Thomson acquires BIOSIS publishing assets. The Electronic Library 22(2): 210. [Online] Available: {http://proquest.umi.com} [September 29, 2004].
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service). 2004a. Overview for press and media. CAS: the world's most comprehensive resource -- for chemical and related scientific information. [Online]. Available: {http://www.cas.org/New1/casinfo.html} [November 24, 2004].
CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service). 2004b. SciFinder Scholar. [Online]. Available: http://www.cas.org/SCIFINDER/SCHOLAR/ [November 24, 2004].
HighWire Press. 2003. About HighWire Press. [Online]. Available: http://highwire.stanford.edu/about/ [November 24, 2004].
Kawasaki, J. 2004. Agriculture journal literature indexed in life sciences databases. [Online]. Available: http://www.istl.org/04-summer/article4.html [November 30, 2004].
McDonald, S., et al. 1999. Searching the right database. A comparison of four databases for psychiatry journals. Health Libraries Review 16(3): 151-156.
NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information). 2004. PubMed overview. [Online]. Available: {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/overview.html} [November 24, 2004].
NLM (National Library of Medicine). 2004. Fact sheet: What's the difference between MEDLINE and PubMed? [Online]. Available: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dif_med_pub.html [November 24, 2004].
OCLC. 2003. Biological abstracts. WorldCat Detailed Record. [Online]. Available: http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org [November 24, 2004].
Schmidt, D., et al. 2002. Using the Biological Literature: A Practical Guide. Third Edition, Revised and Expanded. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc.
Thomson. 2004a. Email correspondence from University Account Manager, Thomson Corp. 30 September 2004. [Online].
Thomson. 2004b. BIOSIS Previews. [Online]. Available: {http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/specialized/bp/} [November 24, 2004].
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
While ISTL has always been open access and authors have always retained the copyright of their papers without restrictions, articles in issues prior to no.75 were not licensed with Creative Commons licenses. Since issue no. 75 (Winter 2014), ISTL has licensed its work through Creative Commons licenses. Please refer to the Copyright and Licensing Information page for more information.
