5 Unique Ways to Refine or Expand Result Sets with EBSCO Discovery Service

EBSCO Industries has developed a number of innovative search tools accessible on its flagship platform, EBSCOhost.  For instance, EBSCOhost offers a unique visual search option which we profiled in a 2011 blog post. EBSCO also produces the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), a customized index of an institution’s information resources (catalogs, institutional repositories, full-text subscription databases, etc.) that gives users access to the content through a single search form.  EDS also includes access to the EDS Base Index, which provides metadata for a wide range of materials, ranging from journals and conference proceedings to CDs and DVDs. EDS uses a technology called “platform blending” to provide relevant results from a variety of subject indexes (which the user must be subscribed to on the EBSCOhost platform).  The platform blending technology allows users to search by the subject headings from controlled vocabularies through the EDS platform.  Professional patent searchers may find this tool to be a useful way to efficiently search all of their organization’s non-patent literature resources through a single flexible interface.

I recently had the opportunity to test EDS, and I was particularly impressed by the variety of tools which the search platform offered for refining or expanding result sets within both the initial search form and the hit list.  EDS includes options to limit the search by discipline, subject, or content provider, and integrated searches and widgets may be used to expand the number of results.   After the jump, learn about five different ways users can expand or limit their result set on EDS!

The Next Google Scholar? Scholrly’s Potential for Locating Non-Patent Literature

Scholrly is a free search engine for academic writing that we first heard about back in the summer of 2012, and the public Beta version of this site was recently released in early January 2013, after six months of private beta testing. The service currently covers the field of computer science, but the creators plan to eventually expand the coverage of the service. Back in 2012, I wondered if Scholrly may one day replace Google Scholar as the easiest free search tool for quickly locating academic writing that may be used as non-patent literature (NPL) prior art by professional patent searchers.  I’ve finally gotten the chance to test the Scholrly search interface, and the hit list and full record views for both article and author results offer some unique data formatted in very useful displays for quickly locating related articles and authors. The quick and advanced search options on Scholrly are very run-of-the-mill, though, and no secondary filtering options are offered in the hit list.

After the jump, learn about the search and display features for the new Scholrly search engine, and see how it measures up to Google Scholar!

New on JSTOR: Books and Expanded Free Content!

JSTOR is a subscription-based online archive of journal articles and scholarly content, produced by not-for-profit organization ITHAKA, which may be one useful source of non-patent literature prior art for professional patent searchers. The site has recently undergone some major updates to the content coverage and accessibility of select journal articles within the archives, and patent searchers will benefit from the new types of prior art that can be accessed on the portal and the expanded free content on the site. Last year, JSTOR began offering limited free online content through the the Register and Read program, which was released in beta-testing phase during early 2012.  As of January 2013, JSTOR has greatly expanded the number of journals accessible through the Register and  Read program to more than 1,200 titles. JSTOR also recently added digital book coverage to the portal through the new Books on JSTOR program, and currently more than 15,000 scholarly books can now be searched simultaneously with the journal content on the platform.  Prior art searchers will therefore have access to a broader array of non-patent literature prior art formats that can be searched on a single intuitive interface, and more of the journal content is now freely accessible for registered users.

Continue reading for an overview of new free content accessible through the JSTOR Register and Read program, and also learn about the scholarly books now available on the JSTOR platform!

A Network of Open Access Search Platforms from Springer

The major scientific publisher Springer Science+Business Media operates a number of online search platforms which allow users to access bibliographic and full-text data about journal articles and other media published by Springer.  A past Intellogist Blog post reviewed the continuously updated SpringerReference resource, and the publisher also provides the popular SpringerLink search platform as a free online tool. SpringerLink is free to search, but many of the articles and books listed on the platform are only fully accessible behind a pay wall.  Springer also has created a network of fully open-access search portals, and unlike SpringerLink, all content on these platforms are completely free to access.  These open-access Springer portals can provide valuable non-patent literature (NPL) prior art for patent searchers and may serve as a useful supplement to searches of subscription NPL portals and government-funded systems like PubMed.

Continue reading to learn about the coverage, search and viewing features of four Springer open-access portals: BioMed Central, Springer Open, Chemistry Central, and the Cases Database.

A Centralized Portal to Free Biomedical Literature: Europe PubMed Central

I was recently alerted to the Europe PubMed Central portal by a post on the Science Intelligence and InfoPros blog, where Herve Basset describes the site as “not only a new Medline“:

Unlike PubMed Central, Europe PMC provides a single point of access to not only full-text articles but additionally the abstracts available through PubMed. The Europe PMC interface also offers novel features and functionality, including links to other relevant content, integrated text and data mining tools and grant reporting services through Europe PMC plus.

Europe PubMed Central is a portal created by the the European Bioinformatics Institute, The University of Manchester (Mimas and NaCTeM), and the British Library (in cooperation with the with the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the U.S. National Library of Medicine), which allows users to search a variety of open access biomedical literature. The portal lists coverage of the following publications:

• PubMed abstracts (about 22 million)
• Europe PMC full text articles (about 2.2 million, of which over 400,000 are Open Access)
• Patent abstracts (over 4 million European, US, and International)
• National Health Service (NHS) clinical guidelines
• Agricola records (500,000)
• Supplemented with Chinese Biological Abstracts and the Citeseer database.

Read on for an overview of how to search Europe PubMed Central to locate open-access biomedical literature, patent abstracts, and even grant information!

Broad Non-Patent Literature Coverage on Thomson Innovation

The Thomson Innovation System Report on Intellogist was fully reviewed and updated earlier in October, and last month I highlighted some of the major updates to non-patent literature search features on Thomson Innovation. Today I’d like to take a step back and highlight the unique non-patent literature (NPL) coverage available on Thomson Innovation, one of the only major patent search platforms to host a broad NPL collection.  Large general content search platforms, such as STN and Dialog, do host both patent and NPL files, but these systems were not specifically designed for patent searchers and analysts.  Some major patent search platforms, such as TotalPatent and Orbit.com, offer access to patent litigation data, and TotalPatent also offers some links to Scopus records for non-patent literature references.  For the most part, however, search platforms designed specifically for patent searchers lack access to scientific and business literature.  Thomson Innovation is an exception, though, since it offers optional access to both a Business Collection and a Literature Collection, searchable on the Thomson Innovation interface.  Users even have the option to search the Patent, Business, and Literature collections simultaneously on Thomson, which may be useful when quickly scoping the possible patent and NPL prior art available for a broad validity search.

Continue reading to learn about the Literature and Business collections available on the Thomson Innovation platform, and how you can search both patent and non-patent literature simultaneously on Thomson Innovation!

Europeana: A Central Portal for Millions of Historical Digital Objects

In a past post, we looked at the European Library website as a possible source for non-patent literature, since patent searchers sometimes need to scour the earth for prior art during an exhaustive search when other, more traditional resources haven’t provide the needed references. The European Library portal is the library aggregator that allows users to cross-search the collections of national and research libraries in 48 countries, and it is part of the Europeana family of services.  Europeana is a free online portal that allows users to access “millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitized throughout Europe.” The site is an initiative “endorsed by the European Commission,” and currently over 20 million objects from more than 220 institutions over 34 countries are accessible through the portal.

Europeana made a bit of a splash in the information technology word this September when it released the metadata for its dataset of over 20 million cultural objects under the Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication.  According to the Europeana press release, this means that “anyone can use the data for any purpose – creative, educational, commercial – with no restrictions.”  This data is all freely accessible through the Europeana website, so I decided to take a quick look at the search options available through the Europeana portal.

Continue reading for an overview of the Europeana search portal, where you can access descriptive data and links to millions of historically and culturally significant digital objects.

The Latest Updates from Knovel: New Database, Subject Area, and Excel Tool

As an online subscription portal created to provide technical information for scientists and engineers, Knovel can also be harnessed by prior art searchers looking for reference information on engineering and technology topics. Knovel, originally launched in April 2001 and maintained by the Knovel Corporation, is a subscription-based online platform that provides access to more than 4,000 reference works and databases from over 90 international publishers and professional societies. Knovel focuses on engineering content, and and it currently covers 30 subject areas.  According to its website, the Knovel interface also provides access to “interactive tables and graphs to help engineers use and export relevant data.”  Through the Major Recent Updates section of the Knovel System Report on Intellogist, you can read about the latest changes to Knovel’s content coverage and interface.  The Knovel system has seen a number of updates during the month of September, including a new Titanium Alloy Database, a new subject area covering Fire Protection Engineering and Emergency Response, and an Excel Add-In which users can download to integrate the Knovel search and unit converter tools into their Excel worksheet.

After the jump, learn more about these September updates to Knovel!

Major Updates to Non-Patent Literature Searching on Thomson Innovation

Thomson Innovation is an important subscription-based patent search system created by Thomson Reuters, and Release 3.5 of the system was recently announced in August 2012.  This system update includes a number of improvements to patent search and alert options, such as the ability to include DWPI and INPADOC family information in alerts and major enhancements to legal status searching in the Native Japanese Patent collection.  The 3.5 release also includes multiple updates to the Scientific Literature section of Thomson Innovation, which we’ll take a closer look at in this post.  The Scientific Literature collection now contains broader coverage due to the expansion of Web of Science content back to 1898. Search enhancements include new literature search fields, and stopwords are no longer blocked from queries in the non-patent literature search forms.  Result sets for the scientific literature searches now include additional sorting and filtering options, and more full-text article linking, ordering, and document delivery options are available through result sets and full record views.  Finally, enhancements were made to analysis tools for scientific literature content.

Continue reading for a full list of updates to the scientific literature coverage, search, viewing, and analysis tools on Thomson Innovation!

Search Tool Tidbits: Scholrly, Clustify, and HQ Books

In the last few posts on the Intellogist Blog, we’ve focused on major updates to large patent search tools, such as Google Patents and TotalPatent.  Today I’ll take a step back from the big players and highlight some obscure search tools that may give you that extra boost you need to locate that one relevant piece of non-patent literature (NPL) prior art which you’d have otherwise overlooked. Scholrly is free search engine for academic papers (currently in closed beta-testing phase) that may one day rival Google Scholar, and HQ Books is a free PDF search tool which can help you locate product manuals and user guides from all over the world.  For those patent analysts who want their daily dose of obscure resources: don’t worry, I have one for you, too!  We’ll take a quick look at Clustify, document clustering software that identifies important keywords, representative documents, and a hierarchy of customized tags for almost any dataset.

Continue reading for a round-up of little-known tools for prior art searchers and data analysts!