Science Intelligence and InfoPros

“Since its launch in 2001 Wikipedia has seen incredible growth worldwide, counting more than 21 million articles published in around 280 languages (including nearly 4 million articles in English) in 2012 (1).

Wikipedia has grown in size (number of Wikipedia entries/articles have been increasing over time) and is showing high reliability: a recent study (2) of historical entries found 80% accuracy for Wikipedia, compared to 95-96% for other sources. This means that for the entries checked in the study, Wikipedia contain on average only about 15% more errors than other sources including traditionally perceived authoritative sources such as Encyclopaedia Britannica. The research found that this difference was negligible. Adding to this Wikipedia’s ease of access and wide coverage of topics explains why for many people it has become the first port of call for instant general knowledge on a variety of subjects. (…)

What is perhaps surprising is that Wikipedia appears to be increasingly used by scholars for their research. (…)

More interestingly, there has also been a dramatic increase in the number of publications referring to Wikipedia as a source. The aforementioned recently published study  limited the search results to mentions of Wikipedia as a reference title, but extending the search to all reference fields reveals much wider use even with restrictions to scholarly content published in journals . CAGR was an unbelievable 88% per annum since the first paper in 2002 to the 4006 papers published in 2011. Focusing on the past 5 years (2007-2011) CAGR was still impressive at more than 31% per annum.

Huggett, Sarah. The influence of free encyclopedias on science. Research Trends, March 2012. Available from: http://www.researchtrends.com/issue-27-march-2012/the-influence-of-free-encyclopedias-on-science/ [Accessed 23rd April 2012]

QUOSA was already known by ScienceDirect and Scopus’ users for the PDF download facilities embedded into the Elsevier’s products.

Elsevier’s acquisition of QUOSA marks a continuation of this collaboration which has boosted research productivity for the users of both solutions.

“QUOSA empowers enterprises to share full-text scientific information faster and more efficiently, helping users to get more out of their information while controlling costs, all with one easy-to-use copyright observant solution,” said Malcolm MacKenzie, President and CEO, QUOSA. “Both our customers and the wider research community stand to benefit from the pooling of resources and expertise with Elsevier.”

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Boston, QUOSA began by targeting the academic and government segments and now also serves a range of corporate customers, including more than half of the Top 25 pharma-biotech companies. Financial details of the acquisition are not being disclosed.

Press Release:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_02199

A new study, to be published into Scientometrics, shows that Google Scholar “lacks the quality control needed for its use as a bibliometric tool“.

Some findings:

• universities from China, Brazil, Spain, Taiwan or Indonesia are far better ranked than expected
• in some cases, the local contents, including papers in low impact journals, popular scientific literature, and unpublished reports or teaching supporting materials are clearly overrepresented

Aguillo, Isidro. Is Google Scholar useful for bibliometrics. A webometric analysis. Scientometrics, In press.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/lrug235244u112rg/

In this video presentation, Rosemary Lau, from AstraZeneca, gives her view on the challenges of demonstrating ROI of paid R&D information tools, against the backdrop of free information sources, budget cuts and changing business strategy. In her presentation she analyzes cost savings realized from Elsevier’s paid information tools, and the tangible and intangible savings in terms of a scientist’s time.

http://www.elsevierpharma.com/challenges-demonstrating-roi-paid-rd-information-tools

A good press for the RSC tool, in the latest Business Technology issue (Nov. 2011):

“ChemSpider has proved to be the most innovative and adaptable chemical data source publicly available,  …

ChemSpider provides access to a powerful core chemistry search (…) together with the tools for users in the developed and developing world to use and publish their own data“

http://biztechreport.co.uk/about-business-technology/latest-print-edition/

Previous posts on ChemSpider: http://scienceintelligence.wordpress.com/?s=chemspider

New release for Digimind to accompany social media monitoring:

http://www.digimind.com/news/products/696-digimind-launches-digimind-9-%E2%80%93-next-generation-competitive-intelligence-for-smarter-decision-making.htm

Summary
The four most popular search engines PubMed/MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Google Scholar are investigated to assess which search engine is most effective for literature research in laser medicine. Their search features are described and the results of a performance test are compared according to the criteria (1) recall, (2) precision, and (3) importance.
As expected, the search features provided by PubMed/MEDLINE with a comprehensive investigation of medical documents are found to be exceptional compared to the other search engines. 

However the most effective search engine for an overview of a topic is Scopus, followed by ScienceDirect and Google Scholar. 

With regard to the criterion “importance” Scopus and Google Scholar are
clearly more successful than their competitors.

All in all Scopus is the most effective search engine if one requires only an overview of the topic.  For a widespread and in-depth investigation in the area of life science and closely related topics, PubMed/MEDLINE is more  appropriate

Tober, Markus. PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus or Google Scholar – Which is the best search engine for an effective literature research in laser medicine? Medical Laser Application. Volume 26, Issue 3, August 2011,
Pages 139-144. Basic Investigations for diagnostic purposes
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1615161511000329

[News originally diffused by Pablo Iriarte]

Thomson-Reuters announces:

“The Book Citation Index in Web of Science connects a library’s book collection to powerful new discovery tools, giving researchers the ability to quickly and easily identify and access the most relevant books.

 Bringing together scholarly book, journal and conference proceedings literature within Web of Science, optimizes the powerful features of citation navigation.[...]

Completeing the Research Picture with Book Citation Index: Coverage of over 30,000 editorially selected books, starting with publication year 2005, with 10,000 new books added each year.[...]

Expose Your Collections: Link directly to your library catalogs and eBooks to increase the visibility of your valuable collections and subscriptions. [...]

Textbooks, Encyclopedias, Reference Books not included. Full indexing of Books and individually-authored Book Chapters. Capture of all fundamental bibliographic information as well as author cited references”

http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/

The latest project of Microsoft Research seems now ready to enter the market of free publication engines… and to compete with Scholar Google, PubGet, FreeFullPDF, etc.

A quick look on it tonight gave me a good first impression:

• a nice interface: nothing original here, but vital features are present
• interesting analytic options are proposed: co-authors graph, citations analysis, etc.: see http://academic.research.microsoft.com/About/Help.htm
• Content: they claim to have 27 million publications; a quick search gave me less hits than in PubGet (“Benfluorex”: 49 in MAS, 105 in PubGet)

To investigate further and to follow…

[See my previous post]

Springer has decided to make the SpringerImages App free.

Anyone can download the SpringerImages App and access the 295.000 OA images for free. Institutional customers with a Clinical Medicine/Life Science or complete subscription to SpringerImages.com have mobile access with their Username and Password.

Individuals may purchase access to these image collections. Visit springerimages.com/mobile for more information