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From the Editor
What do Roger Summit, founder of Dialog, and Tom Cruise have in common? An article, titled “From Roger Summit to Tom Cruise: Traditional Online’s Adoption of New Technologies,” in the September/October issue of Online magazine, makes this comparison while highlighting the new ProQuest Dialog™. For an additional perspective, read “Warm Welcome to ProQuest Dialog’s new release” in VIP LiveWire Weekly. These are just a couple of the many favorable comments from enthusiastic searchers who are excited about Dialog’s new service. Be sure to read the article in this issue highlighting new features in ProQuest Dialog to learn more. And check us out at London Online to see demonstrations of the new service at the booth.

Also in this issue read about the free file for November—Ei Compendex^® containing comprehensive coverage of significant engineering and technical literature, a feature article on environmental information and of course, search tips and techniques from our subject experts and patent guru, Ron Kaminecki.

Join us at London Online

Stop by and see Dialog and ProQuest at Online Information 2010 at the Grand Hall in Olympia, London, November 30 through December 2, 2010. Besides showcasing new product and content developments, Dialog is planning or sponsoring the following events. Mark your schedules so you can be part of these activities!

• 12:45 p.m. – 1:15 p.m., Tuesday, November 30: Quantum² presentation on “Making the Business Case” in the Global Business Information Forum, by Liz Blankson-Hemans, Dialog Director of Market Development
• Tuesday, November 30: Quantum² InfoStars Award recognition reception
• 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Tuesday, November 30: Dialog customer event, featuring a presentation on new and forthcoming developments for ProQuest Dialog
• Wednesday, December 1: ProQuest and Dialog sponsor SLA Europe Annual Breakfast in Pillar Hall
• 11:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m., Wednesday, December 1: Dialog presentation on “The role of taxonomy, folksonomy and semantic technology in the new world of open access search and discovery” by Edward Watkins, Dialog Director of Platform Management in the Enterprise Search Theatre.

You can find Dialog with the ProQuest group of companies in Booth 304, at the front of the Olympia Grand Hall exhibit hall. We look forward to welcoming you.

 

It’s easier on ProQuest Dialog
Suggested terms, related articles, easy narrowing of a search and previewing a document are all new features on ProQuest Dialog™. Each month we’ll take a look at new features to see how ProQuest Dialog has made searching easier and more intuitive for you.

Automate your search strategy

• Suggested terms are common search terms and phrases. As you enter your search term in the search box, for example the term motor neuron, suggested similar terms will display as you type, offering you alternative words and phrases you may not have considered. You can select one of the terms or disregard them and continue.

• Pluralization will automatically find singular and plural variations of words you are searching. In this search neuron, neurons, disease and diseases are listed.

• British/American spelling of medical terms will search for both spellings. Notice here the search term is “tumor,” but the search also retrieved results with “tumour,” the British spelling.

• Did you mean assists with misspelled words, for example, the drug sulfonamide. If you get no results, the search engine automatically searches for one alternative spelling that will include a statement showing you what was searched on the results page. A search using the correct spelling retrieves more than 36,000 records!

Note: Where the original search term has results, those are presented, along with alternate spellings and one suggested alternative term.

No matter which database you search, you don’t have to think about these aspects of creating your search strategy. ProQuest Dialog does it for you!

 

Free File of the Month
Scientific and technical information are key components of effective research. In today’s highly competitive world, engineers must stay on top of ever-emerging technologies. Ei Compendex^® (File 8) is a database you will want to search for authoritative engineering information.

Produced by Elsevier Engineering Information, Ei Compendex provides abstracted coverage of significant engineering and technical literature. Coverage dating back to 1884 is divided into a number of databases, with current files updated weekly:

• File 8, the most comprehensive, from 1884 to the present
• File 278 from 1970 to the present
• File 288 from 1990 to the present
• File 988, a historical view of engineering developments and innovations described in literature from 1884-1969.

Use this important database to:

• Monitor the progress of competitors’ innovations
• Locate emerging technologies
• Check for prior art on your own inventions and verify the feasibility of others’ inventions
• Find information on the activities of private, public and government research labs, institutes and think-tanks
• Locate state-of-the-art technology in conference literature much sooner than journal literature
• Find new test and evaluation techniques pioneered and practiced by U.S., Canadian universities and those outside of North America.

With 190 engineering disciplines covered from more than 55 countries in 26 languages, Ei Compendex^® is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary literature database available to engineers. The database covers subjects in every engineering discipline including: chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical and mining engineering and embraces all fields of engineering—geological, biological, electronics and control engineering, fuel, mechanical, automotive and robotics to name some. It is an indispensable tool for professionals, researchers and librarians.

Compendex contains over 10 million records from more than 6,500 scholarly journals, transactions, reports and special publications of engineering societies, scientific and technical associations, government agencies, universities, laboratories, research institutions and industrial organizations; monographs; standards; seminars and reports. In addition, the database includes more than 480,000 records of significant published proceedings of engineering and technical conferences, symposia and colloquia.

Search up to $100 for free in the file (Connect Time or DialUnits) in November. Output and Alerts costs are not included. See an Overview of Ei Compendex to learn more about this premier engineering database.

 

 Discover: Engineering and Technology Research Content Updates

Going green? You need Dialog.
Environmental impact. Pollution. Habitat protection. Waste management.

In today’s world of increasing awareness and decreasing tolerance of risks to the environment, environmental accountability and compliance are central issues. Businesses must anticipate problems, manage risk and stay current with new legislation and regulations. The recent offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico along the U.S. coastline brought worldwide media attention as the environmental impact of the spilled oil reached epic proportions. Yet many companies are increasing their profits by finding new markets for the industrial by-products they once considered to be waste. These “green” corporations of the world are gaining favor with customers, consumers and investors.

By definition, the field of environmental studies is interdisciplinary, incorporating elements of chemistry, life sciences, health sciences, earth and atmospheric sciences, engineering and technology, public policy and business practices. Because the answers reside in many different sources, locating this information can be a tremendous challenge. Dialog offers researchers, business personnel and knowledge workers an incomparable collection of data on every aspect in the field of environmental studies.

Timely content
Dialog provides the searcher with a powerful tool to find timely, pertinent information vital to environmental issues and concerns such as:

• Current research: Controlling toxic spills, disposing of hazardous wastes, studying ecosystems, monitoring updates on habitat restoration, managing waste and resources, checking petroleum pollution
• Experts: Identifying consultants, obtaining expert testimony
• Legal and regulatory issues: Environmental laws, litigation, U.S. government regulations, national and international private-sector activities, compliance requirements, environmental impact requirements, standards
• New markets for chemical by-products: Investing in “green” products, marketing by-products
• Toxicity and safety data: Exposure to toxic chemicals, handling waste disposal, toxicity data, detection, monitoring, and control technologies, biological control agents, fuel storage, radiation
• Industries/companies and the environment: Examining pollutants, detection technologies, recycling, waste disposal procedures, environmental conservation
• News and public opinion: Local environmental concerns, major spills, cleanup and impact on legislation and public policy, early warning of changing social attitudes, marine ecology, habitat restoration, asbestos handling and cleanup.

Survey the landscape…Earth, Air, Water, Biosphere
Get started by tapping into scientific literature in Dialog OneSearch^® categories, including Environment [ENVIRON], Marine Science [MARINE], Pollution [POLLUT] and Water and Aquatic Sciences [WATER]. These categories contain databases on a vast array of subjects with citations from many environmental, toxicology, technical and chemical publications. With the use of controlled vocabulary, indexed terms and descriptors, you can locate exactly the information you need.

Comprehensive information from studies of ecosystems and updates on habitat restoration to toxicology, waste and resource management data is contained in databases including:

• BIOSIS Previews^® (Files 5, 55) with scholarly publications and conference papers
• CAB ABSTRACTS^® (File 50) containing key journals such as Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Environmental Toxicology and Science of the Total Environment
• PASCAL (File 144) covering environmental journals like Science of the Total Environment, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Review, and Journal of Hazardous Materials
• Environmental Sciences (File 76) embracing environmental sciences, from agricultural, biotechnology and air quality to waste management and water resource issues in journals including Bioresource Technology, Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, and Environmental Pollution.

Toxicology, regulatory and safety
Expose toxic chemicals, pollutants, safety hazards, waste disposal and handling and their remedies using databases such as Energy, Science and Technology (File 103), The Journal of Commerce (File 637) and PIRA (Packaging, Paper, Printing and Publishing, Imaging and Nonwovens Abstracts) (File 248) with publications including European Environment & Packaging Law, Bioresource Technology and Converting Today. Uncover reports such as Air Toxics Report, Air Water Pollution Report, Asbestos Control Report and Report on Defense Plant Wastes to stay abreast of the latest regulator and compliance issues with ease.

Industries and the environment
Get to the bottom of issues in selected key industries in databases such as the Cengage/Gale collection—PROMT^® (File 16), Business & Industry™ (File 9), Newsletter Database™ (File 636) and Trade and Industry Database™ (File 148)—and McGraw-Hill Companies Publications Online (File 624). Examine pollutants, polluters, cleanup practices, detection and control technologies, recycling and waste-disposal procedures and pivotal issues linking industry and the environment. Locate journals such as Business & the Environment , Environmental Business Journal, Journal of Business Ethics, Environment Week, Environmental Management Today and Environmental Manager.

You can also track progress of environmental efforts and look to the future, too. Spanning markets, products and services, sources like Clean Air Network Online Today, Occupational Health & Safety Letter, Waste Treatment Technology News, Hazardous Waste News and Pesticide & Toxic Chemical News focus on business and economic issues. In addition, for exhaustive research check the incomparable collection of newspapers, global and local news publications from over 11,000 news sources in Dialog NewsRoom (File 990).

Whether you are a scientist working on the latest solar technology or a regulator researching and setting industrial and product standards or a company that provides environmental cleanup and waste-management services, Dialog has the answer to enable you to integrate essential science and high-technology data with business and regulatory intelligence. Dialog has the information you need to be environmentally responsible—the information you can’t be without.

 

 Validate: Intellectual Property Content Updates

New coverage — Russian Patent Applications and Utility Models
The coverage of Russia in Derwent World Patents Index^® (DWPI^SM) (File 351) has been extended to include Russian Applications (RU A) and Utility Models (RUU), adding to the existing coverage of Russian Granted Patents in the file. New records identified as basics now include a DWPI title and abstract and DWPI manual coding and chemical indexing (fragmentation codes, Markush indexing, polymer indexing and/or DCR indexing) where applicable. In addition, the translation of the original author title and first claim is available in the DWPI family member level for each of the Russian records.

The coverage started with the published data from January 10, 2010, and the first records appeared in the product at the end of October. Click the table icon on the right to view the number formats for the new coverage of applications and utility models, and the existing coverage of granted patents.

 

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

Recidivists beware, computers coming your way!
My very first job out of school was to work on a criminal database that tracked all the literature we could find on predicting which parolees would be most likely to stay out of jail. Our database had everything searchable that could possibly be handled by the computer, including words in the title, abstracts, keywords and journal citations, plus various numbers like publication year, etc. We established links back to the original documents so we could find the original documents quickly and then we put it to the test by suggesting sociologists ask some questions. One of the first requests was for a document that wasn’t described by words or numbers, but rather by a color. Seems the researcher remembered reading an interesting article, but all he could remember was it had a green cover! We weren’t prepared for this data type and had to manually scan our document file by color. So what do you do when the requested information does not match your resources?

Looking for excuses when you really can’t play the hand you’re dealt
Even when databases are broken up into atomic particles of information — resolving a publication date into month, day and year or a patent class code by main class, subclass and into the area after the decimal points, you never know what type of request you will not be able to search in your system. No matter how finely resolved the data, we sometimes receive requests in which the question is wrong. Yes, I know, the requester is never wrong, but maybe, just maybe, the information that person was given was wrong through a misspelling, optical character recognition (OCR) software error, smudged fax, indecipherable handwriting, mishearing, poor memory or because my dog ate my homework. Yes, I have plenty of excuses and use them with some regularity (feel free to contribute to this list).

Still, you are faced with finding something even though the incoming data is wrong. This is especially difficult when a number is wrong because numbers are somewhat difficult to run through a spell checker. Below is one technique that was pioneered by Ted Kerin of the Dialog Knowledge Center when he is faced with trying to help a user find a patent even when he is given a wrong number.

Can’t play your hand? Try reshuffling to at least make it look good
Here’s the situation: you are given a patent number to look up. You cannot find the original documents and you suspect the number is wrong (see excuses above if you have a problem with this part). If this happens, you will need to find other information (with the exception of the color of the cover) about the document, like an assignee/inventor name, technology area, dates or especially, country of the publication to confirm you found the right one. So, search what data you have, minus the patent number in question or the country of publication, and try to get the set down to a reasonable number of hits.

Then, RANK the results by PNCC CONT where PN is the patent number, CC is the two-letter country code and CONT means continuous (i.e., RANK PNEP CONT for a European patent number). The results will be a list of publication numbers in that country code covering that area of technology. By perusing this list, you can quite often find a real number that approximates the number you were given. This approach is also usually cheaper and faster than simply typing out all of the records.

Ted adds that he copies the information into Microsoft Word and then uses the FIND function to look for substrings of the data if the number does not pop out quickly. Note that sometimes the data you are given by the requester may not only be missing digits, but it also may have transposed numbers. So, it is best to search for different three-to-five digit strings until you get a match. Note this technique only works on Derwent World Patents Index^® (File 351) and INPADOC/Family and Legal Status (File 345).

Of course, once you find the correct number, make sure you politely inform the requester (though try not to rub it in) that the number you were given, while wrong, was nonetheless found due to your competence. For this, I have a much longer list of terms I use, though understandably, I won’t print it here. As P. O’Grady (BRAIN, 15 April 2010, p. 40) once said, “Words are cheap, but dentistry is expensive.”

 

 Learn about ProQuest

Get your answers in ProQuest Central — Professional Edition
What is ProQuest Central and how is it different from ABI/INFORM Complete™ or ABI/INFORM Global? ProQuest Central — Professional Edition is the largest aggregated full-text database in the market today. With more than 10,000 journals and some 7,000 in full text, it serves as the central resource for researchers in all markets. It covers more than 160 subject areas – from science and medicine to business economics, accounting, taxation, labor, human resources and finance.

ProQuest Central includes ABI/INFORM^®, ProQuest Accounting and Tax Database, ProQuest Health and Medical Complete™, ProQuest Pharma, ProQuest Science Journals™ and more. In addition to access to millions of much-coveted full-text articles from thousands of scholarly journals, ProQuest Central also provides information not available from other aggregated products, such as global newspapers, full-text dissertations in business, psychology, physical sciences, health and also market reports. You’ll find unparalleled resources, from MIT Sloan Management Review to China Review to The Journal of International of Business Research to Chemical Week to Electronic Engineering Times to Environment to Journal of Climate to some 1,300 SWOT analysis reports from such leading sources as just-drinks and Business Monitor International.

The Dialog and ProQuest Central complement
Dialog and ProQuest Central complement each other, offering a combination of Dialog’s precision searching with the ability to readily locate full text in ProQuest Central. Because of the vast content on Dialog and ProQuest Central, searchers with accounts to both services have a huge range of data at their disposal, and they can make informed business decisions and act quickly from the answers they find in Dialog and ProQuest Central. ProQuest Central’s award-winning Smart Search feature helps searchers better define search queries and expand their research.

The multi-disciplinary database supports a wide variety of departments with diverse data needs and variant skill levels within an organization. Additionally, copyright compliance is built in if users share documents or save them to their hard drives.