Are RSS feeds near to death?

BlogLines, one of the first Rss feeds agregator, will shut down on November 1.

The main reason: “being locked in an RSS reader makes less and less sense to people as Twitter and Facebook dominate real-time information flow”

What to say to your end-users if you recommended them to set-up their alerts in Bloglines?!
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=679065…

Bloglines Announcement: http://blog.ask.com/2010/09/bloglines-update.html?goback=.gde_67906_member_30666586

Scopus or Web of Science: which should you prefer?

A very good study that I missed in 2009.

Vieira, Eliszabeth S. and Gomes, José A.N. A comparison of Scopus and Web of science for a typical university. Scientometrics, Vol.81, N°2, 2009, pp. 587-600

Abstract/Findings:

“For many years, the ISI Web of Knowledge from Thomson Reuters was the sole publication and citation database covering all areas of science thus becoming an invaluable tool in bibliometric analysis.

In 2004, Elsevier introduced Scopus and this is rapidly becoming a good alternative.(…)

This paper attempts to answer the question that all researchers ask, i.e., what is to be gained by searching both databases? Or, if you are forced to opt for one of them, which should you prefer?”

Some findings:

• 2/3 of documents are referenced in both databases
• Coverage of some journals in Scopus can be partial
• WoS covers mainly North America and Western European
• Google Scholar has a good coverage for Proceedings, as well as international, non-English language journals
• Ranking of publications are quite similar in Scopus and WoS, not in Google Scholar
• Scopus provides the best coverage in Social Sciences
• There are more journals covered in Scopus than in WoS
• Most of Journals covered by Scopus and not by WoS have a good citation record and are classified in the area Health Sciences.
• Most of documents referenced only in WoS are proceeding-like with no citations

“The general conclusion is that Scopus has a larger coverage, representing, on average, 104% of WoS”.

The Crème of the Web: introduction to Patents

A few nice resources for non-specialists:

• Patent Research Basics (Dialog): an excellent manual to start with patents. Includes a benchmarking of databases (pp.11-12)
• British Library IP Centre offers several nice guides

• Official Patent Organization guides:
  • IPO
  • EPO
  • WIPO

• Official publications to monitor new patents: the IPO produces Patents Journal, the EPO publishes European Patent Bulletin, and WIPO its PCT Newsletter.

Inspired by:
Janes, Adrian. Selected sources for patent research. FUMSI, September 2010. Online: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/60879

For me, one of the best free sources for non-specialists is:

www.freepatentsonline.com

which is well rated by the experts community Intellogist

Researchers believe in trusted peers networks

Highlights of the ‘Future of Search and Discovery’ survey were recently shared during an Elsevier-hosted webinar.

More than 1,200 academic, government and industry researchers participated in the online survey which was fielded in late June/early July.

Respondents came from 100 countries and 20 fields within the physical sciences and engineering, life, health and social sciences disciplines.

One of the findings was that “eight in ten (81 percent) respondents agree ‘in the next several years, researchers will use knowledge networks (online groups of trusted peers) as a reliable source for filtering and viewing information‘.

In: Researchers find open data key to future of search and discovery: Elsevier survey – 29 Sep 2010 – KnowledgeSpeak, Online:

http://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpBatch=1532

Elsevier Pres release:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_01690

The main problem isn’t too much information…

“Scientists are spending too much valuable time digging through content. (…)

The main problem isn’t too much information – researchers welcome the value of added content – but discoverability of the right information.

Researchers want to consume more information but don’t want to sift through irrelevant data.”

Judson Dunham (Elsevier, talking about results of the Future of Search and Discovery survey, which leads Elsevier to design SciVerse).

in Research Information, Issue 50, oct/Nov. 2010, pp. 12-13

Your Experts directory with Collexis

Look at this very nice hompage, made with Collexis/BioMedExperts.

The Johns Hopkins University offers a wonderful promotion of their researchers.
http://www.researchprofiles.collexis.com/jhu/default.asp

Collexis Community:
http://www.researchprofiles.collexis.com/jhu/community.asp

Tomorrow’s Researchers behaviours

This unique UK study is focused on the famous Y generation, and on how young researchers behave to find out their information.

Funded by the JISC and the British Library, this 3-year study investigates researchers habits in their digital and physical (library) environment.

One of the confirmation is that “take up of Web 2.0 tools has been slower than expected“, which tends to contradict many clichés.

http://explorationforchange.net/index.php/rot-home.html

See also:
Hutchings, Charles & Newman, Joanna. Understanding tomorrow’s needs. Research Information, Issue 50, Oct./Nov. 2010. pp. 11

PharmaBiomed Congress: a brilliant programme

PharmaBiomed will take place in Spain (Seville), from 8th to 10th of November.

The full programme was just released:

http://www.pharma-bio-med.com/

I will speak on “Real impact of Web 2.0 on Science business”

Registrations are still open.

Clustering search engines: a review

Xerox was one of the first companies to work on clustering services in the early 2000’s, in their Research center in Grenoble (France).

Many changes happened since then, in the clustering search services: Kartoo, among others, has disappeared.

The authors gives here a good overview of current systems which may allow you to try a more efficient search on the web.

Youngkin, Andrew. Clustering search strategies: an overview and update. FUMSI, September 2010. Online:
http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/find/60202

Re-discover your Nature

A nice new modern design for the famous weekly journal, which is still very successful (1 million of PDF articles downloaded per month!).

“Magazines aren’t dead“! says an editorialist.

http://www.nature.com/rediscover/

See the digital edition:

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/a557f6af#/a557f6af/1