From the Editor
A number of content enhancements in business, scitech and intellectual property, along with a feature highlighting the importance of researching conference papers, and new training and documentation all add up to a full issue. And, of course, don't forget to learn more about the free file for March — Corporate Affiliations.

Update your user profile information
As we prepare to launch our transformative new product later this year, we'll be sharing updates and news with you and others in your organization. To ensure you receive the latest information about Dialog and DataStar services, it is important we have your most up-to-date contact information.  Please take a few minutes to update your user profile information online—you might even win an Amazon Kindle™ Book Reader! 

Qualified contact updates received via the online User Profile Update Form by Friday, April 23, 2010, will be entered in a prize drawing for an Amazon Kindle™ (US$275 value). The drawing will be held on April 30, 2010, and announced in the May issue of the Chronolog. Users who previously updated their profile information online during the 2009 qualifying period will automatically be entered into the 2010 Kindle drawing.

Free searching in selected Cengage files through March 31
Dialog and Cengage are continuing to offer free searching in select Cengage files through March 31, 2010. Through the end of March DialUnits, Connect Time, and Alert Profile charges will be waived to allow customers to search these files and create and run Alerts profiles at no charge. Output pricing such as full formats and Alert prints will be charged at current rates. See the January 2010 Chronolog for more details. Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity for unlimited searching in a wide range of business information sources!

 

Chinese full-text patent information to be available on Dialog starting in early April
The database offers access to all Chinese patent publications from 1985 forward covering over 3.5 million full-text records and matching clipped images. The all-new Chinese full-text database, has been created by Scipat and Matrixware™ using state-of-the-art statistical machine translation technology combined with human-assisted intellectual processing. It outperforms other machine translations in readability, content and technical translation. An exciting inclusion is the availability of translated Legal Status information. Chinese technology has become increasingly important, and this database offers a new resource for gaining insight into the rapidly growing Chinese patent universe.

 

Conference papers: Gathering dust or important research?
Conference proceedings are often overlooked when it comes to availability in databases. However, they can be the source of new ideas from well-known scientists and Nobel winners. The exchange and sharing of research results is critical to scientists' work, and the conference paper serves to promote that work while forming a basis for discussion.

Almost every area of scholarship — arts, engineering, humanities, sciences, social sciences — holds conferences where scholars gather to present and discuss their latest research. Whether the topic is broad or narrow, the frequency annual or one-off, these conferences are an important form of publication of scholarly research.

Hidden treasures of conference papers and proceedings:

• The papers at meetings are original! Very often they formulate hypotheses and syntheses of the first order of importance. Thus, they constitute primary sources.
• Conferences are often the first place where ideas are presented and their development begins.
• Conference proceedings offer broad coverage of new ideas and emerging developments in fast-moving areas of research. They are frequently referred to and highly cited in subsequent research papers.
• Proceedings are a key part of the scholarly literature and an important aspect of an individual's record of research activity and impact.

Dialog will help
To illustrate just how useful conference papers can be and how to find them, the following focuses on papers in the biomedical area—database content coverage, thesauri and Dialog indexing and citations—to help you find the papers you need to facilitate your own research.

If you're looking for a paper about epilepsy or diabetes or neurological orphan diseases from a conference, you can discover the papers and proceedings on Dialog. Besides Inside Conferences (File 65) that covers a wide range of subjects from chemistry to technology to engineering to food, a number of subject-specific databases contain conference proceedings and papers in medicine, biotech, engineering and technology to name a few.

Biomedical databases to explore
When looking for biomedical conference material, the first stop is in the big four biomedical databases — MEDLINE^® (File 154,155). Embase^® (File 72, 73), BIOSIS Previews^® (File 5,55) and SciSearch^®: a Cited Reference Science Database (File 34, 434). In MEDLINE and Embase you can learn about conferences worldwide on topics such as surgery at a Texas conference, urology in Australia, or physical activity in children with movement impairment or experimental physiology in the United Kingdom. In BIOSIS look for genome transcriptional profiling at a conference in Russia or "Toxicity evaluation of different urban solid waste" at the International Conference on Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering in Iran. In addition, archive biomedical databases like Embase Classic (File 772) provide historical research on today's hot topics.

Other databases
Other databases to consider for conference information include EMCare (File 45) "Evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of gastrointestinal disorders," CAB ABSTRACTS (File 50) for food topics such as "Expectations and surprise in a molecular gastronomic meal" from a conference in Germany, or Global Health (File 162) to find the Conference on Waste Management in Beijing and the Congress on Meat Science and Technology in Denmark. These are just some of the databases on Dialog containing conference information.

Thesauri and indexing
Databases like MEDLINE and Embase contain thesauri to enable searchers to hone their search strategies using MeSH^® and Emtree^® terms. Combine this controlled vocabulary with Dialog indexing for Document Type (DT=, CT=), publication years and other limiters and you can select only conference papers and/or conference proceedings, from a specific year in a particular location on a specific topic in a few seconds.

Cited-reference searching
Because conference proceedings offer broad coverage of new ideas and emerging developments in fast-moving areas of research, conference papers present important, highly influential research. Accessing conference proceedings through SciSearch: a Cited Reference Science Database enables researchers to see the full value of a paper. They can more effectively detect emerging trends that can help them pursue successful research and grant acquisition. The combination of proceedings coverage and cited-reference searching offers unique insights into the impact of important, highly influential research.

Every year thousands of professionals in the sciences gather to refresh their skills, network and collaborate with their colleagues, and learn about the latest developments in their fields. At these worldwide gatherings participants present the ideas and paths that will shape the future of research. You can keep abreast of the latest research, too, when you search Dialog conference papers and proceedings.

 

Free File of the Month — Corporate Affiliations

If you are looking for authoritative business intelligence on corporate families, Corporate Affiliations (File 513), the free file of the month for March, is the database to explore. Corporate Affiliations provides authoritative business intelligence on corporate families and identifies opportunities to expand your business using current corporate linkage. The goal is and has been to capture companies with annual revenue over $10 million. The focus of Corporate Affiliations is not small business, but significant worldwide businesses that drive the world's economy. The database covers more than 210,000 of the most prominent parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates and divisions worldwide, and over 850,000 executives. File 513 is completely reloaded quarterly to maintain currency.

Known for its accuracy, completeness and timeliness, File 513 covers both U.S. and non-U.S. public and private companies, both parents and affiliates including subsidiaries and major divisions. For example, approximately14,600 non-U.S. parent companies with more than 70,000 related subsidiaries are profiled.

Why use Corporate Affiliations?
Corporate Affiliations has many uses. A few are listed here:

• identify potential strategic alliance opportunities
• determine potential conflict of interest issues and conduct company or industry research
• generate prospect lists on target criteria
• find cross-sell or up-sell opportunities
• link suppliers within a corporate family to determine potential spend consolidation or volume purchase discounts.

Learn more about the database in the Overview of Corporate Affiliations. Register for a Webinar on March 4 to learn about File 513 content. Throughout March, explore this file up to $100 for free (either DialUnits or Connect Time). Output and Alerts charges are not included. Check out the Corporate Affiliations Search Tip in this issue.

 

 Discover: Scientific, Technical and Medical

Enhancements to Jane's Defense database
Dialog File 587 has changed its name to Jane's Defense and Security News to better reflect updating content. Enhancements include:

• Images now available for many new records. The images are shown on the screen when using DialogLink^® 5, DialogClassic Web™, or DialogWeb.  In DialogLink 3, an image URL is given.
• Additional fields. See the Bluesheet and/or the Database Changes Web page for details.
• The full suite of IHS Jane's world leading security and intelligence news titles, including the recently launched Jane's Intelligence Weekly. EXPAND JN= to see the entire list of journals.

The File 587 backfile was not reloaded; new indexes or images are not available in articles loaded prior to UD=201001W3.

 

Learn more about MEDLINE records in Embase
Embase^® continues to add MEDLINE^® records drawn from journals that have not previously been available in Embase. An archive of more than seven million records will be loaded later in 2010. General FAQs are now available to provide you with more information, including advice for those wishing to exclude MEDLINE-originated records from Embase Alerts.

 

Subscription status for Informa databases
Due to restrictions recently imposed by the publisher, Informa UK Ltd., Dialog is now able to offer access to Informa's Pharmaceutical and Health Industry News(PHIND) and Regulatory AffairsJournals databases only via site-license subscription on Dialog and DataStar. This change by Informa affects all aggregators of their newsletters, not just Dialog.

For customers who access this content on a transactional basis, a message will display on entering the database that access is now blocked. Our Knowledge Center team is on hand to assist with migrating your online searching and Alerts to alternative files offering similar content on Dialog and DataStar including, but not limited to:

• NewsRX Weekly Reports (File 135, RXNS)
• ADIS Newsletters (Files 428, 429, ADPC, ADPD, ADPR, ADZZ, REAC, READ, REAA, REZZ)
• Prous Science Daily Essentials (Files 458, 459, PREC, PRED, PRES)
• ESPICOM Pharmaceutical & Device News (File 441, MDNE)
• FDAnews (File 182, FDAN)
• Cengage/Gale PharmaBiomed Business Journals (PTPB)

 

We will continue to develop our leading collection of pharmaceutical newsletters from authoritative publishers to meet your needs.

 

 Validate: Intellectual Property Content Updates

Additional Japanese National Classifications in DWPI
Japanese National Classifications were originally added to Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI^SM) (Files 350/351, 352) in 2009, enhancing approximately five million DWPI records from 1966 to the present. Ongoing updates began including Japanese National Classification on April 17, 2009. 

In January 2010, an additional 3.2 million records through September 2009 received Japanese National Classifications. For information on the Japanese classifications, see the article in the July/August Chronolog.

 

DWPI country coverage enhancement
Derwent World Patents Index^® (DWPI) (File 350/351, 352) has expanded its coverage of key countries. Brazil and Spain have been added to the DWPI major country coverage, and coverage of Switzerland and Korea has been enhanced.

• Brazil and Spain. Enhancements implemented to the coverage of Brazil and Spain are as follows:
  • New coverage of Utility Models starting with the records published in November 2009
  • New coverage of Granted Patents starting with records published from January 2010
  • The coverage of applications will be substantially improved with the introduction of enhanced DWPI documentation and alerting abstracts, and deep indexing of records with chemistry content. The enhanced coverage starts with records published from January 2010, and the same detailed level of coverage will also apply to Utility Models.
• Switzerland. As a result of a new patent law and changes to patenting procedures in Switzerland, DWPI now publishes patent applications 18 months after the date of filing or priority date in addition to the granted patents, covered since 1963. The file also includes other patent kind changes introduced by the Swiss patent office in July 2008.

• Korea. In July 2009, the Korean Intellectual Property Office amended policy so that the PCT data entering the Korean national phase included the international filing date (PCT filing date) as the application date of the Korean patent application. The DWPI bibliographic data includes the usual fields and the corresponding information linking the applications to the original PCT data.

As announced in the November 2009, Chronolog, DWPI has already completed significant enhancements to coverage of Taiwan and India back files and China country coverage.

 

A Proximal and a Distal Tip
by Ron Kaminecki, MS, CPL, JD, director, IP segment, U.S. patent attorney

Not everyone is blessed with a last name like Kaminecki
I used to work with several individuals whose last names were less than five characters. When the mail came in, I noticed that their names were misspelled more often than mine, even though mine, while somewhat phonetic, is a bit more difficult to spell for many people. I determined whenever people asked my name, they inevitably asked me to spell it for them and this isn't something one would do when faced with a very short name. Hence the typos with the short names—actually, it's interesting how people can misspell a three-letter name!

I believe it was Barbara Quint who said that an abbreviation is an intentional typographical error. And, in many systems, if you do not account for this abbreviation, you stand to miss good hits. Note when databases got their start, keyboarding onto paper cards was the state of the art and with a column limit of eighty characters per card, it was prudent to save money by abbreviating wherever possible. Even eliminating a comma between the inventor's last and first name was a 1.25 percent savings in keyboarding. Abbreviating a person's first name to just an initial, you could achieve maybe another 5-15 percent; eliminate the space between the first and middle initials and save a total of about 1/6th of the data potential the cards could contain. Of course, this seems trivial now that punch cards are no longer used, but these legacy formats prevail among the early adopters of machine-readable databases. Note that several databases still abbreviate people's names by using initials for the first name and middle initial, thus blurring the line between Jane, Joan and John Smith. And if the database does not resolve the data down to the whole name, no amount of searching will find it. Some time ago, Derwent World Patents Index^® (File 351) added full inventor names taken from the original filings to its records, thus preserving the legacy format of using initials for inventors, and also adding the additional full names to make retrievals comprehensive.

There are very few inventors who have very many patents, including, "Oleg Ivanovich Kvasenkov" who has almost 6,000. But, "O I Kvasenkov" has over 5,000, thus necessitating a search for both variations or you stand the chance of missing up to 54 percent of this person's patent portfolio. Don't even think of missing 6,000 hits! Lucky for him he is blessed with a somewhat unique last name.

The King's clothes
Consider this German document (DE 19911001) with the name "Baerbel Johanna Koenig" as one of the inventors. The equivalent document in Australia (AU 20034286) lists her last name as "Konig" and China (CN 1352652) has hers listed as "Kanig." Obviously, English struggles with umlauts (König) which have no equivalent, though the Kanig version may be closest. Again, INPADOC/Family and Legal Status (File 345) assembles these name variations into one record, but one has to be careful in many of the unenhanced patent databases available. Note many databases will be consistent with their own data, but may differ from others databases, making the searching of multiple files problematic. Best to EXPAND patent inventors (authors) using several spellings.

Probably the most difficult are the transliterated names — this happens when names are spelled phonetically which, while making pronunciations easier, makes searching very difficult. Take, for example, the following inventor name, "Suzannu Buaajinia Sumisu" transliterated phonetically from Japanese application JP 1993208689. The first name is obviously Suzanne. The second name and third names are an approximation of an English spelling in which every consonant is followed by a vowel and some letters are only approximations. The correct spelling can be estimated by selectively dropping some of the vowels. So, the last name, Sumisu can be approximated Su Mi and Su. In English, the letter ‘i' is used more often than the letter "u" so dropping the two u's you end up with "Smis," which, if pronounced slightly differently, ends up as "Smith."

The middle name is much harder, but it's "Virginia." I found it by typing out a full record in File 345 INPADOC and looked for a different spelling. Obviously, searching such names given only the English or the transliterated version would be difficult, if not impossible, which is why in our INPADOC file we put both versions we are given into the same record. Thus, searching by either name will yield the other. My favorite transliterated name is "Jiyunia" which is a phonetic spelling of what a son with the same first name as his father puts after his name! So, while you run into such names from time to time, you do not have to worry about searching them in File 345.

It is nice to have a somewhat unique name, but one time I was on a flight from New York when my name was called over the loudspeaker to take my belongings up to the first class section. When I came up to the front, not knowing whether I was getting upgraded or tossed off the plane, I noticed the flight attendants looking around and behind me as if they were expecting someone else. When I told them who I was, I could tell by the looks on their faces I was not whom they thought I should be. That's when I remembered there once was a pitcher for the New York Yankees named Scott Kamieniecki. Disappointed though the flight attendants were, I did get a first class seat upgrade, though I didn't sign any autographs.

 

 Market: Business & News Content Updates

NewsRX Weekly Reports adds diverse content
NewsRX Weekly Reports (File 135) now includes articles from 90 VerticalNews™ publications with titles that accurately define the content.  Sources cover business, science, technology, geographic, leisure, travel and entertainment, government and education and law. Journal titles illustrate the diversity of topics: Marketing Business Weekly, Economics & Business Week, Agriculture Week, Defense & Aerospace Week, Energy Weekly News, Journal of Engineering, Internet Weekly News, China Weekly News, Journal of India and many more.

NewsRx publishes the largest weekly database of current medical news, disease research, and business reports for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.  The VerticalNews content is global in scale and has become a "morning brief," with summaries of everything that happened in the world related to specific topics relevant to their fields of endeavor.

 

D&B Worldbase: The most comprehensive business database
More than 75 percent of Fortune 1000 enterprises leverage D&B's business information, tools and insights to provide powerful support to their sales and marketing growth. D&B Worldbase contains business directory listings, sales volume, and marketing data gathered from 155.7 million companies in 214 countries. Developed from interviews conducted by Dun & Bradstreet Information Services' staff of business analysts located around the world, as well as from government sources, large volume mailings, and third-party sources, the database information covers 181 currencies. 

Table: D&B Worldbase Companies by Region

Region	Total Companies	Active	Dialog Database
Africa	1.7 million	1.4 million	518 International
Asia Pacific	22.4 million	18.9 million	518 International
Europe	66.2 million	43.7 million	521 Europe, 518 International
Middle East	.657 million	.589 million	518 International
Latin America	12.5 million	12.0 million	518 International
North America	52.2 million	24.3 million	517 US, 520 Canada
Grand Total	155.7 million	101.0 million

Several D&B databases have name changes: D&B Worldbase — International (File 518), D&B Worldbase — Canada (File 520) and D&B Worldbase — Europe (File 521) — and more than doubled the company coverage. In addition, a new database—D&B Worldbase — U.S. (File 517) has been added. Although similar to Dun's Market Identifiers^® (File 516), it contains more than double the number of companies in File 516.

D&B Worldbase — Who Owns Whom (File 522) links companies to their corporate families, showing the size of the corporate structure, family hierarchy and key information (including D-U-N-S^® numbers) for the parent company, headquarters, branches and subsidiaries worldwide.

To view the number of records by country name in each database, EXPAND CN=.  All databases include Company Names, Addresses, four-digit U.S. SIC codes, Annual Sales in local currency and U.S. dollars, Number of Employees, Organizational Descriptions, D-U-N-S numbers, Parent Company and other information, when available. For specific details about these databases, review the Bluesheets or the Database Changes Web page.

 

 Learn about ProQuest

The ProQuest Pharma Collection offers sources for the entire pharmaceutical enterprise
An extensive full-text collection like ProQuest Pharma works hand-in-glove with the wide range of bibliographic sources on Dialog. Using eLinks, users can seamlessly extend their information-finding from citation and abstract to the full full-text articles showing all research data, images, statistics and more. A few examples from the many titles in ProQuest Pharma illustrate its breadth.

• If you are in pre-clinical research, use the full-text sources in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, including Nature, Biochemistry, Clinical Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Biology, Bioscience and more. Those carrying out gene research will find a strong set of titles on that topic including Nature Genetics, Human Genetics and Heredity.

• For the clinical researcher or medical information professional there are hundreds of general and specialist biomedical and clinical medical titles, including The Lancet, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Diabetes and many others. Where psychology or psychiatry is a research area of interest the ProQuest Pharma Collection includes many titles, including The American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics and The Psychological Record to name a few.

• The research needs of other departments within the pharmabiomed enterprise are also extensively served. For example, those in marketing, advertising and public relations will find the Academy of Marketing Science Review, European Journal of Marketing, American Academy of Advertising, or Public Relations Quarterly. Business intelligence professionals may be interested in Multinational Monitor, Asian Development Review or Multinational Business Review. Andbusiness managers will find Journal of American Academy of Business, Journal of Business Ethics, and The Accounting Review to name a few examples.

 

Review the entire title list for ProQuest Pharma Collection and see just how many full-text journals we have that meet your research needs.

 

ProQuest IQ
A new issue of ProQuest IQ newsletter will be available in March. If you are not receiving ProQuest IQ, we encourage you to subscribe now. It is designed to keep you on top of new and upcoming announcements for the ProQuest business product line and introduce you to some of the complementary resources on Dialog.