sources of scientific information for scientific writing

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Scientific Data Bases
Definition
A database is a collection of related data and information (generally numeric, word oriented,
sound, and/or image) organized to permit search and retrieval or processing and reorganizing.
Importance
 Give international bibliographic information at a time
 Give access to all journal’s articles
 Only quality articles are given in a scientific database
 Source of information about citations and increase a paper worth
 Appropriate source of review
Types of Scientific Databases:
Sr. no. Database Full Name/Abbreviation Type/Access
1. Scopus Scopus Multidisciplinary
(VPN)
2. PubMed Publisher/Public Medline Thematic (open access)
3. ProQuest ProQuest Multidisciplinary
(Login)
4. IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Commercial
5. ERIC Educational Resources Information Center Thematic (open access)
6. WOS Web of Science Multidisciplinary
(VPN)
7. ScienceDirect ScienceDirect Commercial (VPN)
8. EMERALD Electronic Management Research Library
Database
Commercial (VPN)
9. Academic Search
Complete
Academic Search Complete Multidisciplinary
(VPN)
Role of Different Databases in S. Information
1. Scopus Role
Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database that covers science, technology,
medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Content types included on Scopus are
either serial publications that have an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) such as
journals, book series and some conference series, or non-serial publications that have an
ISBN (International Standard Book Number) like one-off book publications or one-off
conferences. To check if a title is on Scopus, visit the freely available Source Title page, or
consult the titles lists below. Updated daily, content indexed on Scopus delivers all metadata
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as provided by publishers, including: author(s), affiliation(s), document title, year, electronic
identification (EID), source title, volume/issue/pages, citation count(s), source, document
type and digital object identifier (DOI) and more.
2. PubMed Role
PubMed, developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), provides free access to
MEDLINE, a database of more than 11 million bibliographic citations and abstracts from
nearly 4,500 journals in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine,
pharmacy, allied health, health care systems, and pre-clinical sciences. PubMed also contains
links to the full-text versions of articles at participating publishers' Web sites. In addition,
PubMed provides access and links to the integrated molecular biology databases maintained
by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). These databases contain DNA
and protein sequences, 3-D protein structure data, population study data sets, and assemblies
of complete genomes in an integrated system. Additional NLM bibliographic databases, such
as AIDSLINE, are being added to PubMed. PubMed includes "Old Medline." Old Medline
covers 1950-1965.
3. WOS Role
The Web of Science is a combination of three databases: Science Citation Index Expanded,
Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Conference
Proceedings Citation Index (Science & Technical Edition). It indexes more than 12,000 peer-
reviewed journals, providing complete bibliographic data and author abstracts. Every item of
significance is listed: articles, reviews, letters, notes, corrections, and editorials. In addition to
access by author, title, and institution, it is also possible to search by cited authors and to find
articles sharing one or more cited reference. It is possible to search the three databases
independently or in any combination. Live links to electronic journals with full text are
included for some publishers. The Conference Proceedings Citation Index (Science &
Technical edition) is a Web of Science database that provides access to published literature
from conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions worldwide.
This resource offers access to conference proceedings and their impact on global research,
including cited reference searching to track emerging ideas and new research beyond what is
covered in the journal literature.
4. ScienceDirect Role
SciVerse Science Direct is an information source for scientific, technical, and medical
research. It is searched using the Scirus search engine. (Updates vary). UW-Madison has
licensed a subset of Elsevier ejournals and ebooks through Science Direct. This subset
includes more than 700 journals and more than 1000 ebooks in a wide range of subject areas.
Each subscribed journal is also accessible from the campus ejournal pages.
5. ERIC Role
ERIC provides access to 1.5 million bibliographic records (citations, abstracts, and other
pertinent data) of journal articles and other education-related materials, with hundreds of new
records added every week. A key component of ERIC is its collection of grey literature in
education, which is largely available in full text in Adobe PDF format. Approximately one
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quarter of the complete ERIC Collection is available in full text. Materials with no full text
available (primarily journal articles) can often be accessed using links to publisher websites
and/or library holdings.
6. EMERALD Role
Emerald Publishing was founded in 1967 to champion new ideas that would advance the
research and practice of business and management. Today, we continue to nurture fresh
thinking in applied fields where we feel we can make a real difference, now also including
health and social care, education and engineering. Emerald manages a portfolio of nearly 300
journals, more than 2,500 books and over 1,500 teaching cases.
7. Academic Search Complete Role
Academic Search Complete offers an enormous collection of full-text journals, providing
users access to critical information from many sources unique to this database. In addition, it
includes peer-reviewed full text for STEM research, as well as for the social sciences and
humanities. Scholarly content covers a broad range of important areas of academic study,
including anthropology, engineering, law, sciences and more.
Academic Search Complete offers access to video content from the Associated Press, the
world’s leading news agency. Videos relevant to the search terms will appear in a carousel in
the result list. With footage from 1930 to the present and updated monthly, this collection of
more than 67,000 videos covers a wide variety of topics.
8. ProQuest Role
ProQuest is a key partner for content holders of all types, preserving and enabling access to
their rich and varied information. Those partnerships have built a growing content collection
that now encompasses 90,000 authoritative sources, 6 billion digital pages and spans six
centuries. It includes the world’s largest collection of dissertations and theses; 20 million
pages and three centuries of global, national, regional and specialty newspapers; more than
450,000 ebooks; rich aggregated collections of the world’s most important scholarly journals
and periodicals; and unique vaults of digitized historical collections from great libraries and
museums, as well as organizations as varied as the Royal Archives, the Associated Press and
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
9. IEEE Xplore Role
The IEEE Xplore digital library is a powerful resource for discovery of scientific and
technical content published by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
and its publishing partners.
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IEEE Xplore provides web access to more than four-million full-text documents from some
of the world's most highly-cited publications in electrical engineering, computer science, and
electronics.
The content in IEEE Xplore comprises:
 195+ journals
 1,800+ conference proceedings
 6,200+ technical standards
 Approximately 2,400 eBooks
 425+ educational courses
Approximately 20,000 new documents are added to IEEE Xplore each month.
Access to full-text documents in IEEE Xplore can be obtained from:
 A broad range of institutional subscription options
 Exclusive subscriptions available to IEEE members and IEEE society members
 Online purchase of individual documents (at discounted prices for IEEE members)
Repositories and Their Role in Scientific Community
Information systems with scientific and academic contents available in open access.
A repository have role in research, teaching, learning, and administrative processes. Although
many institutional repositories are primarily established for the benefit of the organization
and its users, there is an increasing movement towards 'open access' to the wider community,
sometimes in a global sense.
Examples
i. RIA
ii. RCAAP
iii. AIRE
Types of Repositories
Repositories are of three types:
i. Digital Repositories
ii. Institutional Repositories
iii. Open Access Repositories
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Digital Repositories
A formal digital repository is where digital content, or assets, are stored and managed to
facilitate searching and retrieval for later use. A repository supports mechanisms to import,
export, identify, store, preserve and retrieve digital assets. It is also increasingly being
recognized that repository use can be encouraged through additional services to encourage
community sharing and exchange of both practice and content.
Institutional Repositories
Many institutional repositories initially focussed on research outputs and some still limit their
collections to this type of content. Others have started to widen the original remit to include
learning and teaching materials. Whilst institutional VLEs have, to some extent acted as
stores for learning and teaching materials, they tend not to support the search and retrieval
functions required for a repository. Making this content more open, even within the
institution, presents challenges for institutions with a commitment to open up their resources.
Open Access Repositories
Repositories are increasingly being made more 'open' to make content accessible to wider
user groups, sometimes at a global level. Not all repositories are open: some are designed to
support sharing within a specific group and are sometimes described as 'closed'. These
repositories often require authentication and some have varying levels of access and 'degrees
of openness'. The concept of open access repositories is closely linked to open access
research papers, but the idea has wider currency and is linked to concepts of open educational
resources (OERs) and open content licensing.
Role of Repositories in Scientific Information:
Research outputs repository Learning and Teaching materials repository
Role in global community (open):
 Assists research collaboration through facilitating
free exchange of scholarly information
 Aids in the public understanding of research
endeavours and activities
Role in global community (open):
 Supports re‐ use and re‐ purposing
 Supports community input to metadata through
tagging, notes, reviews
 Supports development of effective retrieval through
professionally created metadata
 Ensures trust through appropriate licensing
 Supports the sharing and re‐ use of individual
assets
 Supports the sharing and re‐ use of complex
learning resources Helps to develop critical mass of
materials in particular subject areas
 Cost efficiencies
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 Decrease in duplication
 Provides access to non educational institutional
bodies such as employers, professional bodies, trade
unions, etc.
Role for the institution:
 A repository can interoperate with other university
systems and maximise efficiencies between them by
sharing information
 A repository can increase the visibility and prestige
of institution
 (depending on content contained)
 Repository content is readily searchable both locally
and globally Allows an institution to manage their
intellectual property by raising awareness of
copyright issues and facilitating the recording of
relevant rights information.
 A repository that contains high quality content could
be used as 'shop window' or marketing tool to entice
staff, students and funding
 Repositories can store other types of content that isn't
necessarily published, sometimes known as 'grey
literature'
 A repository may be an important tool in managing
an institution's research assessment or quality
assessment submission
Role for the institution:
 Maintaining and building on institutional
reputations nationally & globally
 Attracting new staff and students to institutions
 Increased transparency and quality of learning
materials
 Supports sharing across/between departments
within institutions and interdisciplinary cross‐
fertilisation
 Shares expertise efficiently within institutions
 Supports modular course development
 Supports storage, management, preservation,
attribution and retrieval of student content
 Easily incorporated with institutionally‐ owned
technologies

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Role for the researcher:
 Increased visibility of research output and
consequently the department and the institution
 Increased impact of publications. Research made
freely available can be disseminated more widely
and have greater impact. Work done on citation
analysis has demonstrated that research that is made
freely available will be easier to cite
 Offers usage metrics so researchers can determine hit
rates on specific papers
 Creates the potential to undertake citation analysis
through following links to papers held in other
repositories
 Helps researchers manage any requirements of
funding bodies for publications to be made available
in a repository
 Provides the possibility to standardize institutional
records e.g. an academic's CV and published papers
 Allows the creation of personalized publications lists
Role for those supporting teaching & learning:
 Supports sharing of knowledge and teaching
practice
 Encourages improvement in teaching practice
 Offers one‐ stop access point for staff
 Encourages multidisciplinary collaboration and
sharing
 Supports CPD and offers evidence of this
 Increased visibility within the institution and
possibly their subject discipline community
 Reward and recognition from the wider community
if made open.
Content Types in Repositories
Digital repositories may include a wide range of content for a variety of purposes and users. The focus
of each repository, and, therefore, what content it will store, will depend upon the policy decisions
made by each institution or administrator. To give an idea of the type of content currently held in
repositories worldwide, the Directory of Open Access Repositories‐ OpenDOAR has identified the
following as the most common content types in repositories:
1. Publications
• Articles ‐ Articles in journals, magazines, newspapers. Not necessarily
peer‐ reviewed. May be an electroniconly medium, such as an online journal or news
website
• Books ‐ Complete books or conference volumes
• Book Sections ‐ Separately‐ authored chapters or sections in books
• Conference or Workshop Items ‐ Papers, posters, speeches, lectures or
presentations given at a conference, workshop or other event. If the conference item
has been published in a journal or book then please use 'Book Section' or 'Article'
instead

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2. Theses & Dissertations
Student theses and dissertations submitted to an institution as part of the requirements for a degree,
including:
• Doctoral Theses ‐ PhD
• Masters Theses & Dissertations ‐ MSc, MA, MBA, etc
• Bachelors Dissertations ‐ BSc, BA, etc
3. Resources used to support teaching and learning
• Curricula and syllabuses
• Course validation documents
• Course materials ‐ learning resources, lecture notes, learning exercises
• Assessment materials ‐ tests, exam papers
• Study skills, support and revision materials
• Student‐ produced work (including all the content types listed here)
4. Audio Visual Items
• Images ‐ Digital photographs or visual images
• Video ‐ Digital video
• Audio ‐ Sound recordings
• Datasets ‐ Bounded collections of quantitative data (e.g. spreadsheet or XML data
file)
• Experiment ‐ Experimental data with intermediate analyses and summary results
Grey 5. Literature
• Patents ‐ A published patent. As‐ yet unpublished patent applications should never
be included in a repository, because to do so might disqualify the application
The following are grouped together by EPrints as Monographs, although many people use
'monograph' as a synonym for 'book'
• Technical Reports
• Project Reports
• Documentation & Manuals
• Working Papers & Discussion Papers

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Aggregators Role in Scientific Community
Aggregator refers to a web site or computer software that add multiple databases and other
platforms in a single point of search.
Types of Aggregators
Taken broadly, aggregators can be categorized as follows:
1. Hosting Aggregators
• Ovid, SilverPlatter, Dialog, Catch Word, Highwire Press, Allen Press, the American
Institute of Physics, the hosting services of Ingenta and so on
2. Gateways Aggregators
 Subscription Agencies as Gateway Service Providers
 SwetsNet, RoweCom, Informatics (J-Gat)
 Traditional Abstracting & Indexing Producers/Publishers
 ISI, BIOSIS, CSA, INSPEC, etc.
 Third Party Link Service Providers
 CrossRef
 SFX from ExLibris (Open URL)
3. Full-Text Aggregators
 Perpetual Access models with archiving space for the library – Ovid,
 OCLC
 Annual Lease Access models – ProQuest, EBSCO
General Role of Aggregators
 Aggregators facilitate the diversity of publication from large numbers of publishers
rather than promoting the continued conglomeration of publishing houses.
 Aggregators provide services to libraries.
 Generally speaking aggregators have played an intermediate role and their services
have been used by libraries and publishers for many years.
 They have performed functions such as handling orders, billing, payments, renewals
and cancellations.
 The electronic environment has presented publishers with a new way to aggregate
(without the middlemen) by bringing content together and offering all their electronic
journals to libraries as a package.
 The emergence of aggregator packages has had a considerable impact on the role of
the collection manager in the library.
Examples
I. B-on
II. Google Scholar

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III. Integrated Search
B-ON
The Biblioteca do Conhecimento Online – b-on (Online Knowledge Library)
makes unlimited and permanent access available, within the research and higher education
institutions, to full texts from over 16,750 scientific international publications from 16
publishers, through subscriptions negotiated on a national basis with these publishers.
The Science and Technology Observatory carried out an exhaustive analysis of the
subscriptions to scientific journals from all the Portuguese institutions in order to prepare for
negotiations with the publishers. In 2001 the important scientific bibliography tool Web of
Knowledge , of the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia, was made available,
which made it possible to access titles, summaries and citation information and impacts of
around 8,500 journals, including records going back to 1945. Also in 2001, the OCT began
negotiating with the main publishers.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you
can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions,
from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
 Search all scholarly literature from one convenient place
 Explore related works, citations, authors, and publications
 Locate the complete document through your library or on the web
 Keep up with recent developments in any area of research
 Check who's citing your publications, create a public author profile

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By: M. Ghous
MNS UAM