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.

Search Multimedia and Visualize Topics on Science.gov!

Federated search portals are a valuable tool that professional patent searchers can utilize as one source for locating non-patent literature (NPL) prior art, especially government-funded scientific data and literature.  Science.gov is an important example of a government-funded federated search portal, which provides access to over 55 databases and 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information through a single query. Back in 2010, image search made a debut on the Science.gov platform. A recent NewsBreak from Information Today alerted me to the latest changes on the Science.gov federated search portal, which now has multimedia results automatically included in the hit list, the option to visualize topics from the search results, and a Spanish-language version of the portal.

Continue reading to learn about the new features on the Science.gov portal, which may help you locate unique non-patent literature prior art!

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!

How to Stay Updated on Yearly Changes to MEDLINE

It’s that time of the year again.  No, not fall, Halloween, or the beginning of the Christmas shopping season (that started in July); it’s time for the annual MEDLINE®/PubMed® Year-End Processing (YEP) activities.  If you look at the Major Recent Updates section of the MEDLINE system report on Intellogist, you’ll notice that during September of 2011 and 2012, there are mentions of an annual update to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the controlled vocabulary for MEDLINE. The yearly MeSH update is one part of the YEP activities that occur every fall.  The MEDLINE file is a central resource for biomedical prior art that can be freely accessed through the PubMed interface, so patent searchers should be aware of the updates made annually to the database and its controlled vocabulary, as well as how these changes may affect their prior art searches.

After the jump, learn all about the year-end processing activities for MEDLINE and how these changes may affect your searches on PubMed!

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!

Where Do You Start a Copyright Search?

Although Intellogist focuses on resources for patent searchers, we often explore search tools for other types of  intellectual property researchers. A few weeks ago, I gave a brief overview of how to search the USPTO’s Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS), an invaluable resource for trademark searchers focusing on US intellectual property.  Besides patents and trademarks, copyright is the third major type of intellectual property in the US, and the US Copyright Office provides access to all copyright records from 1978 to present through the US Copyright Catalog. The US Copyright Catalog is an excellent place to start a copyright search, although you may want professional searchers to help you with locating copyright records for important business decisions and legal matters.

Continue reading to learn about searching for copyright records through the online US Copyright Catalog!

Locate Research Repositories Through Databib

  There are all types of online directories that can help you locate the perfect open-access resource, ranging from directories of open access journals to directories of open access repositories. Patent searchers may occasionally need to access entire research data sets as sources of prior art during an exhaustive validity search, and there are repositories where you can search for entire data sets on specific subjects, such as Data.gov.  I recently came across an interesting tool created to aid users in locating these repositories of research data sets which incorporates the detailed bibliographic records about specific resources that is reminiscent of the open-access directory websites.  Databib is a tool for locating online repositories of research data, and the site was originally sponsored by a Sparks! Innovation National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (with additional support from the Purdue University Libraries).  Databib allows users to submit and curate detailed records that describe data repositories, and other users can then search or browse through these records to locate the needed data resource.

After the jump, learn about the search, browse, and viewing options for records about data repositories on Databib!

A Whole New Look for Engineering Village

Engineering Village is a subscription platform created by Elsevier that allows users to search a variety of important patent and non-patent literature (NPL) databases, including Compendex and Inspec.   Engineering Village is updated on a fairly regular basis to incorporate new features onto the platform, and according to the Major Recent Updates section on its System Report, Engineering Village was last updated in June 2011.  The June 2011 update added new features like Author Detail links from from Compendex and Inspec articles to the SciVerse Scopus Author Profile/Preview page for each author and IPC codes added to Inspec records.  The addition of IPC codes to Inspec records is a particularly useful new search option for patent searchers, who can now search for NPL records corresponding to a specific IPC code assigned to a target patent.  The link to author profile pages on Scopus adds more interoperability between the Engineering Village and SciVerse hub platforms, which are both created by Elsevier.

Another update to Engineering Village is slated to occur near the end of July, and this update seems to focus on making the homepage and search results page more user-friendly and customizable.  The update also adds small but important new features like search terms highlighted in an article and the option to add additional search fields on the Quick Search page.  Read on to  learn about the planned improvements to the Engineering Village interface, and how these updates may affect your non-patent literature searches!

5 Recent Changes to the PubMed Interface

The NCBI Entrez service, a gateway to multiple life sciences collections hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), links to a number of free databases that are invaluable free resources for various types of non-patent literature.  We’ve briefly looked at PubChem as a useful source of chemistry-related prior art,  and users can search for genetic data through NCBI BLAST and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man ® (OMIM).  One of the most popular resources available through Entrez, the PubMed search platform, is probably familiar to any patent searcher who’s hunted for biomedical non-patent literature.  PubMed is a massive free online database of medical information provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the platform interface has undergone multiple changes over the last few months that will make searching, evaluating, and saving results an easier task for anyone who needs to use PubMed.

Read on as we look at the five most recent changes to the PubMed interface, including a new filter sidebar, support of versioned citations, and more!

My Favorite Open Access Resources: DOAJ

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens are not a few of my favorite things (probably not even in the top 10), but I can say with certainty that one of my favorite things is Open Access (OA), as I’ve illustrated in past blog posts.  These past posts discuss open access resources ranging from university repositories to OA sections of subscription databases. Today I’ll highlight a central directory that allows users to locate thousands of available OA journals, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) .  Patent searchers can utilize this resource to locate obscure prior art from all over the world during comprehensive patent searches, and almost all prior art located through DOAJ is full text and freely accessible.

After the jump, learn about the open access coverage and search options available on DOAJ!