Support : Publications : Chronolog Archives : November/December 2003

Major Enhancements Now Available for BIOSIS Previews on Dialog

New enhancements to BIOSIS Previews (Files 5, 55) add more information and greater consistency to the database resulting in more consistent search results.

The primary enhancements providing more information-rich records are:

• Addition of more than nine million CAS® Registry Numbers and more than 6,300 sequence data accession numbers to the 1969-1992 data
  
  
• Addition of BIOSIS Major Concepts over the entire range of the database

Other improvements to the file include:

• Unified revised lists of Super Taxa, Taxa Notes, Biosystematic Codes and Concept Codes across all years
  
  
• Enhanced mapping of Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) disease terms from 1998 to the present, resulting in the addition of many more MeSH terms
  
  
• Significant enhancement and standardization of bibliographic data, including remapping of Document Types across the file, as well as checking of publication year, volume, issue and pagination data
  
  
• Streamlining of patent indexing across all years

Refer to the Bluesheet for Files 5 and 55 if you need help searching for CAS Registry Numbers and sequence data accessions numbers from the Enzyme Commission. This data will appear in a new field: Enzyme Commission data (EC). A new series title field (TI) has also been created.

A number of minor BIOSIS Previews fields are discontinued and others have been merged.

• Discontinued: Summary language (SL); Coden (CD); Illustrations (IL); Size, for example, computer file size (SZ); Print Number (PR) and Book Distributor (DI).
  
  
• Discontinued fields ­ data merged with other existing fields: Named Persons (NP) and Industry (IN) fields will no longer appear. The information will be added to the Miscellaneous Descriptors (MI) field. Also included in the Miscellaneous Descriptors (MI) field are Company names (CO). The CO field will continue to exist but will specifically contain Patent Assignee data.

All changes are documented in the Bluesheet. If you need help editing your Alert or have other questions about the changes, do not hesitate to contact your nearest Knowledge Center.

BIOSIS Revised Biosystematic Codes

Current enhancements have resulted in a revised list of Biosystematic Codes and Organism Classifiers. In particular, many codes and classifiers for viruses were restructured. Outdated codes, i.e., codes only used from 1969-1972 were replaced with current codes. The outcome is consistent application of the Biosystematic Codes throughout all of BIOSIS Previews.

Searchers depend on the Biosystematic Codes for searching and many of you use them in Alerts and saved searches. If you currently hold a Dialog BIOSIS Alert, you should already have been informed of the specific changes that might affect your search statement.

We encourage you to check the lists of old and changed codes and terms at support.dialog.com/searchaids/dialog/f5_codes/ to ensure that you are using the correct Biosystematic Codes. As mentioned, the Virus section has experienced change and if you are likely to use the Virus codes, you should check that your search statements are accurate.

These major content-related enhancements will have significant effects on subject retrieval and the accuracy of search results and are expected to be implemented on Dialog DataStar (BIOL) before the end of 2003.

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