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From the Editor
Our upcoming release of additional content for ProQuest Dialog™ provides a grand finale for this exciting year at Dialog. Learn more about its special features when you read "What's next for ProQuest Dialog?" in this issue. And find out how to maximize your ability to assess companies and competitors by trying out Experian, the Free File of the Month for December.

 

What's next for ProQuest Dialog?

We are still receiving wonderful feedback about our September launch of ProQuest Dialog™, featuring content used by pharmaceutical and biomedical researchers in corporate and government organizations. This next generation of Dialog offers databases from some of the world's most trusted publishers, such as Embase^®, BIOSIS Previews^®, MEDLINE^®, SciSearch^®: A Cited Reference Science Database, Adis Reactions and IMS R&D Focus.

How do you follow such a successful launch? Why, with more fabulous content, of course.

More content for the scientist
With the December release, ProQuest Dialog will contain nine subject areas covering the wide range of R&D-driven data. Scientists will find more medical and pharmaceutical content including:

• EmCare^®
• The Lancet^®
• PsycINFO^®
• Gale Health Periodicals Database
• Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS)
• Clinical Trials Insight and many more

New sources for the engineer
ProQuest Dialog's coming release also will provide authoritative content for engineers, who often seek to discover new ways to build the products that can solve problems in their markets, as well as identify trends and track new technologies and processes reported in the conference literature. Thus, access to the highest quality information available to compete in highly-charged markets is vitally important.This data will soon be found on ProQuest Dialog, including:

• Ei Compendex^®
• NTIS: National Technical Information Service
• Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology Abstracts
• GeoRef

Other content
To complement pharmaceutical, biomedical and engineering searching, you'll find databases in aerospace and defense, automotive, chemistry, energy and the environment, food and agriculture, healthcare and telecommunications and computing.

• Polymer Library
• British Library Inside Conferences
• Foodline^®: MARKET
• FDAnews

Simple, intuitive interface
Scientists and engineers will find it easy to search this premier content from authoritative sources on the simple, intuitive interface they desire, yet maintain the power they need. Check out the latest release of ProQuest Dialog coming soon!

Visit the Dialog Web site for the latest information about ProQuest Dialog. See new database descriptions, search screencasts and FAQs.

 

InfoStars announced at London Online

We are pleased to announce our newest InfoStars, who were honored last week at Online Information 2010 in London. These outstanding information professionals take a leadership role in improving the flow of information within their organizations. Congratulations to our InfoStars!

• Samantha Knott, Medical Information Manager, Napp Pharmaceuticals, UK
• Silvia Ivaldi, Head of Documentation, Chiesi Farmaceutici, Italy
• Fabienne Michaud, Customer Services Manager, Royal Society of Medicine, UK

Read more about this year's InfoStars.

 

Holiday message from your friends at Dialog
Dialog and the ProQuest family would like to wish you a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year. With the launch of ProQuest Dialog, its new innovative, easy-to-use search service, 2010 has been an exciting year at Dialog. We have participated in many other exciting events, initiated new ideas, expanded our communication channels and illustrated innovation with new products, new and enhanced content and more. We'd like to share with you a few of the highlights from 2010.

Product development

• ProQuest Dialog — launch of Pharm/Biomed content with a new, user-friendly interface. Second release in December includes nine content categories and 56 databases.
• Dialog User Panel — communication channel to interact about ProQuest Dialog

Content

• Chinese Patents Fulltext (File 325) — first complete text of Chinese patent and utility model publications translated into English
• D&B WorldBase^® — more than doubles the number of companies covered in the United States, Canada, Europe and internationally
• Derwent World Patents Index^® (DWPI^SM) (File 351) — enhanced country coverage including Brazil, Switzerland, Spain and more
• Inspec^® — International Patent Classification codes (IPC) added
• Embase^® — MEDLINE^® records added

Partnerships

• RefWorks, a Web-based research management tool, enables direct export of data from Dialog to RefWorks
• Innography, an advanced analytical and visualization tool, adds trademarks to complement its patent content. New post-processing command makes data transfer between Dialog and Innography even easier.

Promotions

• Free files each month in a range of subjects: World News Connection (WNC), Polymer Library, Chinese Patents Fulltext, Adis databases and more
• Special promotions for Gale files, drug pipeline databases and Alerts

Training and documentation

• More than 50 unique Webinars to help develop searching and content expertise in Intellectual Property, Science and Technology, and Business and Marketing, instructed by 15 expert Information Consultants and Content Specialists from the Global Customer Support team
• Webinars by Information Providers highlighting free files and providing advanced search topics
• Numerous self-paced learning opportunities including On-Demand Mini-Modules and Content Focus, updated in-depth seminar workbooks and search aids

Communication

• Eye on Innovation — e-newsletter offering new ideas to find actionable intelligence in areas of medical devices, R&D, video games in biomedicine and more
• ProQuest IQ — e-newsletter keeping you on top of new and upcoming announcements from the ProQuest business product line including the new ProQuest interface
• Dialog Twitter site — follow Dialog events and announcements

Dialog 2011 promises to be even more productive and innovative than 2010 (which is saying a lot!) with the addition of more scientific, intellectual property, business and news content to ProQuest Dialog. Stay tuned — your Chronolog will bring you all the details you'll want to know about news and events at Dialog.

 

It's easier on ProQuest Dialog
Left-hand truncation, special wildcard characters, internal truncation. These new features enable you to flex your searching muscles with * and ? on ProQuest Dialog™.

Less is more when it comes to keystrokes

• Left-hand truncation widens your horizons and lets you pose "what if" truncation. * takes the place of a plethora of prefixes with exponential results. *benzene finds terms like alkylbenzene, benzene, divinylbenzene, hexaflurobenzene, trihydroxybenzene and more.
• Open truncation and see what returns. * substitutes for many characters after the root stem. Chem* finds chemo, chemical, chemicals, chemistry, chemotherapy, and anything else with the root stem chem.
• Internal truncation opens up vistas. Search *b*sis* and retrieve words like basis, fibrosis, asbestosis and others. Whereas on Dialog it was necessary to OR words like color or colour, the asterisk on ProQuest Dialog stands in for one or more characters. Col*r finds words like color, colour and collar.
• Wildcard trumps the ace. The ? stands for one character, and you can specify how many. Nurse? finds nurse, nurses, nursed. Sm?th finds smith or smyth. Comput??? finds compute, computer, computers, computing.
• Take control of the order of processing by using parentheses to nest search terms: *toxic* and (genetic* or reproduct*) means that words with *toxic* must be present in all records along with either genetic* or reproduct*.
• Autosuggestion acts like EXPAND when you start entering terms in the search box in Basic search. Not only that: it also offers up additional possibilities that might help.

 

Free File of the Month
Maximize your ability to assess companies and competitors
Need company background information? Is your company thinking about acquiring or merging with another company? Being targeted for a takeover? Curious about competitors' credit histories? As companies continue to face the challenges of today's economy, information and data analysis are essential to help guide their strategic, operational, risk management and asset valuation decisions.

Take a look at Experian's Business Credit Profiles (File 547). Here you'll find payment histories, UCC filings, banking relationships, and bankruptcy, tax and legal histories, as well as key facts, sales ranges, U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes and more for more than 11 million public and private companies.

File 547 contains a number of important financials.

• Executive summary — gives a quick overview of a company's credit behavior to help you determine whether or not you need to see more details
• Trade payments — provide a timely view of a business' credit performance
• Other payment data — includes payment experiences on non-trade accounts such as leases and bank loans
• Trends and history — represent a continuous analysis of payment behavior over time
• S&P data — provides an important indicator of the financial health of publicly held companies
• UCC details — list the top 10 most recent Uniform Commercial Codes including original, amendments or terminations.

Experian's Business Credit Profiles is an important database to help you:

• learn where opportunities exist and where you should exercise caution.
• determine whether you can confidently make a credit decision concerning a new customer and assess the credit risk based on collateral such as real estate and inventory
• decide whether to do business with companies and choose reliable suppliers and partners
• identify the best business leads for your company based on your current customers' characteristics.

Search up to $100 for free in the file (Connect Time or DialUnits) in December. Output and Alerts costs are not included. See an Overview of Experian's Credit Report Profiles and register for a Webinar on December 6 to learn more about this premier financial database. (Psst. Check out the Search Techniques in this issue for an Experian search tip.)

 

 Discover: Biomedical Content Updates

Annual reload of MEDLINE underway
Preparation for the annual reload of MEDLINE^® on Dialog (Files 154,155) and DataStar (MEDL,MEZZ) is underway. MEDLINE is reloaded every year because the National Library of Medicine (NLM) re-indexes relevant documents from the whole database with changed medical terms. Preparations began in mid-November when the NLM started providing only records not in a "completed" status (without descriptors). These updates contain only RT=In Process and RT=In Data Review records.

Note: No updates occurred from November 18-22 and no Alerts were run. Alerts will begin running again in early December but will not contain any COMPLETED records until the database reloads.

 

 Validate: Intellectual Property Content Updates

Vietnam and Thailand coverage on DWPI
With the inclusion of content from Vietnam and Thailand, Derwent World Patents Index^® (DWPI^SM) extends the number of authorities covered in the database. Coverage of patents from these developing nations further enhances the position of DWPI as the most trusted source of patent information. These country enhancements are in direct response to customer feedback from various DWPI User groups, and market research conducted across all regions.

Enhancements for Vietnam and Thailand include:

• Coverage of all Patent applications and Granted patents published from January 2010
• Records identified as basic with a DWPI title and abstract, with manual codes applied as required
• Deep indexing (Markush, DCR, Polymer and Fragmentation coding) applied to records classified in the relevant CPI sections.

By covering additional authorities in DWPI, the database provides more efficient technology monitoring, prior art and freedom to operate searching. DWPI uses comprehensive, convenient, English language summaries and abstracts with authoritative, intellectually abstracted and indexed content to help you identify otherwise difficult or impossible to find data.

Building on the extensive coverage of Japan, China and Korea and now including content from these new authorities, DWPI is the key source of global value-added patent content in English.

 

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

Lost keys and found patents?
Trying to find a patent can be like trying to find lost keys, except you probably own the keys and know what they look like. The patent you are seeking, on the other hand, you probably don't own and you may have never seen it before. To paraphrase U.S. Supreme Court Judge Potter Stewart, you will know it when you see it. Still, in both cases, you may not find it even if you look in between the couch cushions or your favorite place where lost things sometimes accumulate.

Consider life in a parallel universe
A good way to find something is to find something similar, but in parallel — not actually the same, but in a different plane. For example, my quest to find shirts with extra hidden pockets needed when I travel led me first to stores that specialized in travel clothing. I have found that merchants who sell travel clothing (with hidden pockets) do not have the selection that merchants who sell security clothing do, so looking outside the area of travel clothing and inside the area of security clothing led me to shirts with hidden pockets. (Once when sitting on an airplane wearing one of these shirts, a passenger winked at me. I took this as a sign he was onboard security and thought he had found another air marshal!) So, I was able to locate a source for the proper travel product by searching in a non-travel source.

How does this affect patent searching? Sometimes people get stuck in a search because they are looking in only one area, and they keep coming upon the same wrong references. Several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, especially KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, Inc., suggest analogous arts are to be considered for non-obviousness purposes and so not only does researching different subject areas help identify proper patents, but also such searching may actually be necessary to comply with the interpretation of the law.

Kalberwurst, Bratwurst or Kielbasa?
In order to search analogous areas, there has to be some kind of link. Examples illustrate possible, but unusual links:

• The problem of jamming many boxes into a delivery trailer can be solved by looking in the area of computer science, which is faced with scheduling programs of various sizes into a computer. The link involves determining who else can have a similar problem. The IT people actually call it the "Backpack Problem," and the solution can be used to optimize loading trucks the same as loading programs. Here the link is in the name and takes you to computer algorithm databases instead of transportation or packaging databases.
• In an area like genetics, because DNA consists of only so many base pairs, perhaps an analogous solution to a biological question can be found in combinatorial mathematics. Here the link is in the root of the problem being more math than biology.

In Dialog, one method of conducting a patent search on a chemical is to use a CAS^® Registry Number to identify the exact substance — but, patent-only databases do not have this code used for indexing. By searching a chemical database that also happens to contain many patents, like CA Search, you can do a reasonable search, even if you do not know a lot of chemistry. Here, instead of searching a patent database, start in an analogous file like CA Search and select the CAS Registry Number as RN=, limit the results by patent (SELECT S1/PAT) and then extract the patent numbers using the MAP command (MAP PN T). Executing the results in a database like Derwent World Patents Index^® will retrieve a very precise set of hits on the substance identified by the CAS Registry Number. Here the link is found in the type of database containing chemical and patent information indexed by a specific identifier. Contact me directly to see an example. By the way, this is half of The Bridge technique I will explain in my next column.

Where parallel lines may actually meet
Thus, the idea of parallelism involves thinking a bit outside of the target area to search something else suggested by a link. The link can take many forms, including just the name or subject area of the database, the real root of the issue, a suggestion by a coworker (or by our own Knowledge Center) or your experience dabbling with outside areas. Or, as described in one of my favorite patents, US 6,025,810, titled, "Hyper-light Speed Antenna," in which a transmission of energy, "pokes a small hole into another dimension, thus sending energy through a place which allows transmission of energy to exceed the speed of light." Well, maybe that's carrying parallel universes a bit too far. But imagine having to conduct that patent search.

 

 Learn about ProQuest

All-new ProQuest platform brings insight to your quests for answers
Momentum builds as ProQuest prepares to launch its new platform. The ProQuest team has created a demo of the new platform, which comes with exciting features and functionality, offering a step-by-step view of what you can expect.

The demo highlights such features as the ability to search within your results and even filter down to just tables and figures.

• Learn how ranked lists of source types, keywords, subjects, classification and more allow you to narrow results on the spot.
• Get more information about retrieved records without leaving the results page with Article Preview.
• Notice that results display Key Words in Context (KWIC) to help you gain a sense of where your search terms appear, with hit-term highlighting.
• Identify source types, such as scholarly journal articles, industry reports and even multimedia content, with Thumbnail icons.
• Get a glimpse of how Deep Indexing works, and thumbnail images in the articles surface on the results page, allowing you to go deeper into your research.