« January 2007 | Main | April 2007 »
March 27, 2007
Proposed: Federal Digital Data Respository
The March 22nd issue of Nature is reporting that an interdepartmental government group, the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD) has recommended that the government set up a freely accessible repository for the massive quantities of data that are generated by research sponsored by many government agencies. Currently such a repository exists for gene and protein data -- Genbank -- and for astronomers. But this proposal, which it is felt WILL HAPPEN, has a much broader reach. The IWGDD represents 22 agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services, and other government branches including the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
A draft strategic plan for this proposal will be drawn up by the Fall of 2007. According to the Nature article,
The group’s first step is to set up a robust public infrastructure so all researchers have a permanent home for their data. One option is to create a national network of online data repositories, funded by the government and staffed by dedicated computing and archiving professionals. It would extend to all communities a model similar to the Arabidopsis Information Resource, in which 20 staff serve 13,000 registered users and 5,000 labs. The IWGDD is considering making submission of well-documented data sets to archives a requirement of getting a grant.
Read the full Nature article.
Posted by Katie Newman at 12:01 PM
March 24, 2007
Scopus Trial Continued
Scopus will continue to be available to the U of Illinois thoughout 2007! If you haven't already given it a try, please do! In many respects, it's a direct competitor to Web of Science, so if you're a Web of Science fan, you will definitely want to try Scopus!
Access Scopus:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=396840
Brief description:
Identifies scientific articles in over 14,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 4,000 international publishers. Multidisciplinary coverage includes health, agriculture, chemistry, physics, life sciences, mathematics, engineering, earth and environmental sciences, social science, psychology, and economics, business and management.
A few comparisons:
WoS indexes about 8000 journals, which have been selected by an editorial review board; Scopus indexes about 14,000, including the whole journal holdings of many publishers. In addition, Scopus indexes many proceedings and other materials.
Both Scopus and WoS include citation tracking (both backward and forward). Citation tracking began in the 1960's for WoS (our subscription goes to 1980); citation tracking in Scopus generally starts at 1996.
Web of Science is more heavily focused on U.S. materials; Scopus claims that over 50% of its journal titles are from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
A recent review compared Web of Science and Scopus:
Susan Fingerman
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Fall 2006
http://www.istl.org/06-fall/electronic2.html
Posted by Katie Newman at 3:58 PM
Trial: CSA Illustrata Natural Sciences
Until mid-April, we have a trial running for CSA Illustrata Natural Sciences.
Why it's unique:
In addition to possessing the ability to search by author names or words in the title or abstracts of articles, CSA Illustrata allows one to search for the content in the figures, tables, maps, and other image data. CSA has actually pulled out words that may have been added on top of lab data photos, as well as content contained in the legends etc. So for the first time you search for illustrations, maps, etc. within articles. This is the ONLY database of scientific literature that possesses this feature.
What does it cover:
Most of the articles are either in biology or medicine. But there is also some coverage of business, psychology, earth sciences, etc., too.
Please give it a try, and let me know what your thoughts are about the usefulness of this resource to you.
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=735828
Posted by Katie Newman at 3:45 PM
March 7, 2007
Trials: Protocols from Nature and from Cold Spring Harbor
Later News (4/20/07): We have taken out subscriptions for BOTH the Nature and Cold Spring Harbor Protocols!
Cold Spring Harbor Protocols http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=598310
FAQ: http://www.cshprotocols.org/misc/faqlist.dtl
Nature Protocols http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=545072
FAQ: http://www.natureprotocols.com/about.php
We have trials running until the end of March, 2007, for two new, important sets of peer-reviewed protocols, one from the Nature Publishing Group and the other from Cold Spring Harbor Press. Both sets of protocols cover a wide range of fields within molecular and cell biology, from bioinformatics and computational biology to basic microscopy and electrophoresis. We do not yet have pricing information for them. Please give them a side by side test drive, and send me your impressions and critiques. If we are only able to afford to purchase a subscription to one of these, which would you recommend?
Please send comments to: florador@uiuc.edu
Cold Spring Harbor Protocols http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=598310
FAQ: http://www.cshprotocols.org/misc/faqlist.dtl
Nature Protocols http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=545072
FAQ: http://www.natureprotocols.com/about.php
Note: we currently have subscriptions to Wiley's Current Protocols series, including Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, Current Protocols in Immunology, Current Protocols in Bioinformatics, etc. For a list, see: http://tinyurl.com/278luk
Posted by Katie Newman at 10:52 AM