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Support : eNewsletters : Chronolog Archives
From the Editor SLA successfully celebrated its centennial year in June with more than 5,800 attendees at its annual conference held in Washington, DC. We enjoyed visiting with many of you at the Dialog/ProQuest booth and at many of the events. As a top sponsor of SLA 2009, we welcomed a couple of pioneers who helped shape the industry: Dialog founder and Chairman Emeritus Roger K. Summit and Cambridge Information Group (CIG) Chairman Robert Snyder. Roger joined host Marty Kahn, ProQuest CEO, in the presentation of the Roger K. Summit Scholarship at a champagne reception, and we proudly named three new InfoStars from among our stellar customers. Both awards are demonstrations of Dialog's long-term commitment to the information professional community. In this double July/August issue of Chronolog, we highlight our partnership with Innography, our new paperless billing, and EMBASE Classic transactional pricing. Several articles written by experts in patents and biomed provide valuable search suggestions, and of course, you'll want to read about the Free Files of the Month. There's much more so take Dialog on your vacation and read all the news!
Manage, protect and leverage your patent portfolio with Innography Dialog has partnered with Innography to bring Dialog customers unique intellectual property business intelligence analysis software. With Innography's Web-based software users can more easily manage, protect and leverage their patent portfolios viewing search results in a unique way to uncover patterns and trends at a glance. For example, it correlates patent data with financial, litigation and other key business information, instantly generating a variety of unique visualizations so users can perform strategic market trending, competitive analysis and other IP-related activities. With this comprehensive perspective, Innography streamlines tasks such as patent disclosure and prior art research, freedom-to-operate analyses, inventory maintenance, competitive assessments, gem-finding and more. Plus, it reveals underlying connections among data that might otherwise be missed, stimulating new ways of identifying potential market opportunities. To learn more about Innography, check the Dialog Web site for more information coming soon!
Go green with Dialog paperless billing "For every ton of paper that is recycled, the following is saved: 7,000 gallons of water, 380 gallons of oil and enough electricity to power an average house for six months." Dialog is pleased to offer you an opportunity to go green with a "paperless" billing option. Instead of receiving a paper copy of your invoice, now you can download your Dialog invoice in PDF format. How it works Get started In addition to doing your part to preserve the environment, you will receive your Dialog invoice faster and have the option to simplify your invoice by selecting only those reports you use.
Quality first for Dialog content: An interview with our Content Quality Assurance team Since one of Dialog's major strengths is its content, we thought you'd like to meet the group that works to apply and maintain quality standards for Dialog databases. Our Content Quality Assurance or CQA team members recently sat down with us to talk about their important role at Dialog and how they add value to the databases. Q: Can you explain what Content Quality Assurance is and what your team's mission is? Q: Who is on the CQA team? With an MS in Chemistry and an MLS, Sophie has been with Dialog for 31 years and is the specialist for patent, trademark and copyright files. In her time at Dialog she has conducted customer training, written documentation, tested new Dialog features and worked on database design. Deborah is the business and news specialist and has been with Dialog for more than five years. She has a degree in meteorology and an MLS. Eireann has been with Dialog for 14 years and is the Biomed/SciTech and Pharma specialist. She has an MLS and an MA in French Literature. Deborah comments: "What makes us qualified to create great products and a great search experience is we understand the customer point of view. Our experience includes business development, customer service, competitive intelligence, public libraries, legal and special libraries and scientific organizations. We've studied information systems and searching behavior and made it our career to improve access to information." Eireann emphasizes: "While our backgrounds are diverse, we share a common goal to make sure existing and new databases are of excellent quality for our customers." Q: What tasks support the mission of the CQA team?
Some of what we do is serendipitous — checking on one issue can lead us to another unexpected task. So we rely heavily on our search skills and subject/database knowledge to make sure the user will receive satisfactory search results. Deborah comments: "As a corporate librarian for several large technology firms over the years, I've used both Dialog and competing products to meet research requirements. This experience provides me with a customer viewpoint of our products and affords real-world insight into why and how information is sought and used." Q: You mentioned special projects, as one of your responsibilities. Can you give us an example of a special project you've worked on? Q: To wrap up, why is your team's role so important to Dialog customers? And, what makes your job at Dialog so exciting particularly after so many years with the company? Our work is also very diverse, and we deal with many different groups — information providers, programmers and colleagues from different departments. Dialog content is greatly varied and each project is different. One day we might be designing a new file like The Lancet, another day we may be testing a trademark database being reloaded, or we could be writing a Bluesheet for a new file or answering a customer's question passed on by our sales representatives. We like to think we're enabling customers to search all our files easily and efficiently by providing a top quality database and helpful aids to aid in searching it. We appreciate the CQA team's time to respond to questions we thought you might have about their work, as well. Watch for interviews with other groups at Dialog in the coming months.
Dialog Finder Files
Free Files for August: CAB Abstracts and Global Health Global Health is a unique public health resource, combining coverage of core public health journals and publications not indexed by other major medical databases, with a true global approach to health. The database contains more serials than any other database in its field; over 3,500 journals are unique. File 162 covers epidemiology, disease and vector control, health promotion and disease prevention, nutrition, infectious and parasitic diseases, medicinal plants, veterinary public health, environmental health, medical entomology and mycology. Key features
Review the Overview of CAB Abstracts and Global Health to learn more about these databases. Throughout August, you can explore these two files up to $100 each (either DialUnits or connect time) for free. Output and Alerts charges are not included. Take this opportunity to try out File 50 and File 162 for free throughout August.
EMBASE Classic available transactionally EMBASE Classic contains 1.8 million records covering facts, data and theories on medical and pharmacological topics from 1947 to 1973, with 90 percent of the records containing abstracts. The records are indexed with the same thesaurus as the current EMBASE® file and includes historic index terms. Access to older research papers can reveal side effects, toxicities or even novel uses of a drug that have not been explored in the past thirty years. The historical data in EMBASE Classic, together with up-to-date records in EMBASE®, gives researchers approximately 60 years of information regarding medical and drug-related subjects. You'll save hours — even days — of research time, gaining a faster understanding of the evolution of today's science and medicine.
Spotlight on EMBASE: Pharmacovigilance searches Because the assessment of risk management of a drug is required by law, a Pharmacovigilance (PV) search can be a serious and potentially costly endeavor. Literature searches are necessary to detect, monitor and communicate drug risks to the appropriate agencies. According to Carol Tsang in her January 2007 article in Regulatory Rapporteur titled "Pharmacovigilance: Is there a difference in perceived practices between innovative and generic industries?" there is a definite need to include EMBASE® in a PV search. She wrote: "MEDLINE® and EMBASE are the two most widely-used biomedical databases for literature searches for spontaneous adverse reactions." EMBASE's deep drug indexing (over 27,000 drug terms) enables a searcher to pinpoint adverse drug reactions and clinical trial papers, and its unique journal coverage and European slant make it a must for a thorough drug search. To understand the value of EMBASE for an adverse reaction search, let's follow Paula, our PV researcher, through a typical search. Paula has been tasked to search for adverse effects of Tramadol. Tramadol is indexed in both MEDLINE and EMBASE, so Paula can utilize the specialized subheadings in each database. To make this easier, she will only select the subheadings the two databases have in common—adverse effects (AE) and toxicity (TO). B 155, 73 S TRAMADOL (L) (AE OR TO) RD Paula organized the search so that duplicates will be removed from EMBASE. Here is the breakdown of results: Set File Items Description
155 377
73 1424
S2 1801 RD S1 (unique items)
EMBASE retrieved 1,424 records MEDLINE didn't—records that would have been missed if only one database was chosen. This is in part due to the approximately 1,800 unique journals covered in EMBASE. Several of the records retrieved were from the Indian Journal of Pharmacology, a journal that has limited coverage in MEDLINE. Another drug that Paula has to track is Amevive or Alefacept, which is used to treat psoriasis. Neither term is indexed in MEDLINE; so, Paula will have to use a text strategy. Since Alefacept is the preferred drug term in EMBASE, Paula can use the appropriate indexing. B 155,73 S ALEFACEPT (L) (AE OR TO OR IT) FROM 73 S (AMEVIVE OR ALEFACEPT) AND (ADVERSE OR TOXIC? OR POISON? OR INTERACTION) FROM 155 S S1 OR S2 RD S3 (unique items) The database breakdown: Set File Items Description 155 106 73 150 S4 256 RD S3 (unique items) Alefacept is a relatively new drug, but EMBASE retrieved 150 focused records. A free-text search performed in MEDLINE could be less targeted and might retrieve irrelevant records. In short, a comprehensive PV search requires at least two databases. With its unique content and deep drug indexing, EMBASE is an invaluable resource for the Pharmacovigilance searcher. Note: For more on searching EMBASE, see the article in the May Chronolog.
TULSA™ (Petroleum Abstracts) reaches abstract one million Material contained in the Petroleum Abstracts Bulletin is indexed using a controlled vocabulary of search terms and added weekly to the subscriber-only Files 986, 987 on Dialog and TULS, TUSL on DataStar. The University of Tulsa™ (Petroleum Abstracts) database covers the worldwide scientific and technical literature and patents relevant to oil and gas exploration and production. Petroleum Abstracts was founded at the University of Tulsa in 1960 and published the first issue of the Petroleum Abstracts Bulletin in January 1961. The service met a growing need to abstract and index a huge influx of information. Today, the Bulletin contains more than 700 entries each week from around the world. The searchable, online TULSA™ (Petroleum Abstracts) database was introduced in 1975. The database is an important tool used by industry professionals, researchers and students to make informed business decisions regarding upstream operations. For more information about TULSA™ (Petroleum Abstracts), check the Dialog Bluesheet and DataStar Datasheet.
Using Japanese Classifications in DWPI Searching for Japanese records in DWPI (Files 350,351,352) from 1966 forward has been enhanced with the inclusion of the classification and indexing systems developed by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO). These hierarchical systems are the File Index Terms (FI Terms) and File Forming Terms (F Terms). The FI codes are similar to IPCs and are applied by Japanese patent examiners to classify the patent into a particular area of technology. The F Terms provide a deep level of indexing and a more detailed view of the patent from a variety of viewpoints. This is particularly powerful in technical fields where Japanese companies are strong (e.g., LCD technology developed in Japan). File Index (FI) Terms On occasion, a Facet (JA=) or a Rank/Type (JT=) term may also accompany the FI Term. On Dialog, the IPC Classification can be linked to these additional terms using the (S) operator. F Terms On Dialog, Theme and Viewpoint can be linked together using the (S) operator. In addition, Viewpoint can be searched with or without the number attached. Consult the DWPI Bluesheet for more information about searching the FI and F terms. A complete list of FI Terms and corresponding F Terms with descriptions in English can be found on the JPO's Industrial Property Digital Library (IPDL) Web site. After reaching the site, click "Patent Map Guidance" to get a menu screen where you can enter the FI/IPC Term or the F Term that you want to examine. For information on searching F codes and FI terms review the Seminar on Search and Documentation Working Methods PowerPoint and the IPC and Other Classification Systems: Japanese Classification System (FI, F-terms) and Quality of Reclassification. Coverage of FI codes and F terms in DWPI Here's an extract of a DWPI record that illustrates the Japanese classification and the various parts of FI and F Terms described in this article. DIALOG(R)File 351: Derwent WPI (c) 2009 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. WPI Acc no: 1998-225286/ Adhesive with low curing shrinkage used for optical disks - including acryloyl-containing urethane acrylate and polymerisation initiator Original Titles: ADHESIVE FOR OPTICAL DISK AND OPTICAL DISK Class Codes
Derwent World Patents Index adds green Manual Codes Each year Thomson Reuters revises the DWPI electrical (EPI), chemical (CPI) and fragmentation Manual Codes. Thomson Reuters is seeking suggestions for revisions to EPI and CPI codes from DWPI users to help improve the indexing of their patent information.
A Proximal and a Distal Tip
One time I was speaking before a group of about 20 attorneys in a conference room at their law firm. I was showing them how to combine techniques such that a list of potential litigants (both defendants and especially plaintiffs) could be created starting with just the name of one of their clients. I asked them to give me the name of one of their clients, and I would show them how to create the list. Nothing exasperates a speaker more than when a question to the group goes unanswered, or worse, is answered by an overwhelming silence. After a brief, but painfully quiet pause, one brave attorney said they could not give me the name of any of their clients as those were confidential. So, I said, "Fine. I'll find them myself," and by adding two more steps in as many minutes, I gave them a list of their top clients! I then proceeded with the original task, though this time with the now undivided attention of the silently-awed (instead of determinedly-mum) group of patent attorneys. The only time they murmured was when I showed them the names of some of their largest client's competitors, some of which these lawyers had actually seen in court proceedings while defending their client's patents. Not bad being able to identify who may be suing your client, even if I did have to start without even the name of the client! A new best-selling book idea... For example, in past columns I mentioned that finding all patent assignees is difficult, and some producers like IFI CLAIMS Patent Services have painstakingly identified what they call probable assignees which is a big bonus. One way to locate your own potential assignees is to make some assumptions and determine that if a patent does not have an assignee, it may have the potential name of the assignee in the legal representative field. That is, in a patent that has no assignee, but was written and prosecuted by ABC Company, you might assume the legal representative field gives a rather obvious hint as to who will be the assignee of the patent. Of course, if the assignee is represented by a law firm, you may be out of luck. Going further, perhaps you could look up all of the patents being prosecuted by that law firm and then RANK the results by assignee, to see if one of the firm's historical clients could be a suspect in the list of potential assignees. And, you could go further than this. Indeed, one of the things we liked about Innography is its capability to give you yet another list of suspects for potential ownership of patents by using similar assumptions in a relational database method. You will be hearing more on this soon, but back to Dialog. The plot for the book titled, "How to Silence Attorneys," thickens... In summary, I looked up the non-traditional legal representative first, ranked their assignees to locate the firm's clients, and then used a recipe to look up the topmost client's patents and the patents that cited them. Finally I ranked the list of citators to locate suspects to be considered as competitors and possibly litigants. Of course, this final list could also have had companies in a joint venture with the Ornery Engineers or even been the parent of this company; so, as with all metadata, please be careful when making assumptions. Metadata and recipes — the best way to keep attorneys quiet since the invention of donuts. Note: If you would like to see an example of this search in recipe format, please email me at , and I will send you one; if you wish, I'd be happy to set up a Webex to cover the details.
When do drugs come off patent? How can you determine when drugs will lose their patent protection? But while the worldwide patenting system is designed to encourage this innovation and discovery process it only grants exclusivity to market that discovery, in this case a new drug, for a limited number of years in return for payment of a yearly maintenance fee. What happens when a drug loses patent protection? Generic drugs are big business IMS Patent Focus (File 447/IPIP) is a focused database for patent information related to drugs. The database contains patent information for significant drugs that have already been marketed or are in Phase III clinical trials or above, but crucially allows access by drug name, CAS® Registry Number or lab code. Each document in the database gives details of the drug name, therapeutic class and associated patent, including priority information and comments fields outlining exactly what is covered by the patent in question. Importantly, information about estimated expiry dates and extensions is also covered, including Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) status, and Japanese and USA extensions e.g.: Expiry date and comments Estimated expiry date: October 2001 SPC Granted SPC date: July 2005. Because patent protection is country specific, each record in IMS Patent Focus is focused on the status of a drug within one single country as opposed to family-based patent databases where a single record gathers together worldwide patent information, such as in Derwent World Patents Index® (File 351) and INPADOC/Family and Legal Status (File 345). This means that an initial search for a drug name in IMS Patent Focus will usually return multiple records, with each record containing information specific to a single country. You may, of course, also find there are additional records relating to the administration of the drug in combination with other active ingredients or to different formulations or anything else that may have been patented for the drug! If your initial search is too broad you can restrict to the NA= index on Dialog, which gathers the drug name, brand name or lab code fields together or to the CAS® Registry Number index RN=; on DataStar the title (.TI.) or synonyms (.SY.) fields can be specified rather than searching all text fields. Since IMS Patent Focus is country-specific, it can be helpful to narrow your search in a second step to the particular country of interest using the Patent Country PC= index on Dialog or the Country (CN)field on DataStar. Trying to narrow your search to "EP," though, will again potentially return multiple records as there is one record per country designated via the European patent office route so search for the national countries of interest, where necessary. With any index field on Dialog or DataStar, it is always prudent to first view the index of interest (the EXPAND command on Dialog, for example expand PC=) before running your search to see how your potential term may be applied within the database. This is particularly true in IMS Patent Focus where you may need to search a combination of different country codes and/or country names. For example, on Dialog national GB patents are indexed as GB or UK in the patent country field; so, you can expand either of these patent country fields (PC=) and get the same number of results. However, GB protection via the European Patent Office route is only indexed as UK EP. On DataStar, national GB patents are indexed as UK in the country field. GB protection via the European patent office route is indexed as both UK and EP. Therefore, search for "UK NOT EP" in the country field to restrict to national GB patents only or "UK AND EP" to retrieve GB documents via the European route. When in doubt always view the index before searching The next time you need to find patent information about marketed drugs or those in Phase III clinical trials or above, IMS Patent Focus is an ideal place to start. |
Manage, protect and leverage your patent portfolio with Innography Go green with Dialog paperless billing Quality first for Dialog content: An interview with our Content Quality Assurance team Intellectual Property Content Updates Smart searching: Use PRINT and save
September Free File of the Month You can search up to $100 (connect time or DialUnits) in the file for free in September. Output and Alerts costs are not included. See an Overview of File 51 to learn more about this important database on Dialog.
DialogClassic® Web XML Enhanced
New DialogLink 5 Excel template for Derwent files
TecTrends reloaded
Dialog at AALL Visit the Dialog booth (#731) in the Exhibit Hall for a reception on Sunday, July 26, to learn more about Dialog's partnership with Innography, and singular preview demonstrations of Innography during the conference.
Regulatory Affairs Journal redesigned in reload PHRJ contains the two full-text journals: RAJ Pharma, covering regulation of pharmaceutical products for human and veterinary use, and RAJ Devices, covering key regulatory trends, as well as announcements and developments affecting the medical device and in vitro diagnostics sectors worldwide.
Scholarly research: Precision searching and fulltext Dissertations are an important part of research because they:
The cement of scholarly research, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) is the single, authoritative source of full-text doctoral dissertations and master's theses. PQDT indexes and abstracts 2.6+ million dissertations and theses from 1861 forward. Continuously updated, PQDT contains author-written abstracts from 1980 forward for dissertations and 1988 forward for theses. More than one million dissertations, with 1,000 added every week, are available in fulltext from ProQuest in digital format, film or paper copy from 1997. Subject coverage encompasses humanities and social sciences and science and technology. Why use Dissertations Abstracts Online and PQDT in your research?
If you need precision searching and full-text results, Dialog and ProQuest provide the answer.
Training Schedule Notice: If you're interested in Dialog and DataStar training, you will want to sign up for the quarterly e-newsletter Training Updates. Don't miss the new issue for July-September.
NEW Dialog and DataStar At a Glance modules A new Dialog At a Glance module describes the RANK command and illustrates how to use the feature in your searching. Just follow the subject-specific examples and you will be analyzing your own search results with RANK.
Dialog award-winners
Dialog also supports the annual SLA Australia and New Zealand Chapter Information Professional of the Year. This year's winner is Claire Stent from Statistics New Zealand. Congratulations to the winners as outstanding examples of role models in the information industry! The Roger K. Summit Scholarship winner this year is Tania Alekson of the University of British Columbia MLIS program.
Dialog Search Tip: Using indexing in CAB Abstracts ?BEGIN 50 CURRENT ?SELECT CHILD?(S)WHOLE()GRAIN? ?TYPE S1/8/1-10 Browse records in Format 8 to see the title, indexing and publication year. Some titles that fit the profile of your search query may immediately catch your attention. However, by looking at the descriptor terms (/DE), the identifiers (/ID), the geographic names (GN=, /GN), the Broader Terms (BT=) and the CABICODES (CN=, /CN, CC=), you can locate synonyms, ways to broaden or narrow your search, and concepts you may not have considered. For broader, global topics, consider a combination of CABICODES and descriptors. Browsing Format 8 in the above example showed the CABICODE (CC=) VV110 for DIET STUDIES, and a RANK DE on S1 yielded the descriptor phrase CHILD NUTRITION, a thesaurus term. SELECT CHILD NUTRITION AND CC=VV110 to find global studies of childhood nutrition across many countries. Try a variety of search strategies in CAB Abstracts in August. Searching is free, but be sure to check your Bluesheet for rates on output and Alerts.
DataStar Search Tip: Searching for status in MEDLINE
In-Data-Review and Publisher are records supplied by other information providers to the NLM. In addition, Publisher articles are those appearing on the Web before they have been assigned to a specific journal issue, so they do not yet have full bibliographic details. A few documents remain out of MEDLINE's usual scope and are not subsequently indexed with MeSH®. Although they stay in the database and have full bibliographic information, these are the 'PubMed-not-Medline' records. To search for a particular status, enter a Quick Code (e.g., PUBMED-NOT-MEDLINE=YES). For a list of the status Quick Codes, enter STATUS=?. MEDLINE Alerts do not contain Publisher, In-Process or In-Data-Review records. However, you can set up Alerts in MEDLINE-IN-PROCESS (MEIP) if you wish to receive Alerts for these types of records. |
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You have seen the news about our new relationship with Innography, a company that has created a novel product that combines data (initially patent-based data) from several databases into easy-to-absorb visualizations and integrates in non-patent data. It is used primarily for patent analysis, but with the promise for other areas as well. We hope you will look into this analytical tool, but for now, here's how to do some analysis on industrial-strength Dialog.