Support : Publications : Chronolog Archives : January/February 2004

Major BIOSIS® Previews Enhancements Now Available on Dialog DataStar

In the November/December 2003 Chronolog Dialog announced some major content and standardization enhancements for BIOSIS® Previews on Dialog (Files 5, 55). These enhancements are now available on Dialog DataStar (BIOL). Dialog DataStar has also made some improvements to its file implementation, including a different treatment of titles to allow better deduplication and standardized database splits.

In summary, the BIOSIS Previews content and indexing enhancements include:

• Addition of CAS® Registry Numbers to more than nine million records back to 1969
  
  
• Addition of Sequence Databank Accession numbers to more than 6,000 records back to 1989
  
  
• Unified revised lists of Super Taxa, Taxa Notes, Biosystematic Codes and Concept Codes across all years
  
  
• Addition of Major Concepts to every citation back to 1969
  
  
• Enhanced mapping of MeSH disease terms from 1998 to date, resulting in the addition of many more MeSH terms
  
  
• Significant enhancement and standardization of bibliographic data, including remapping of publication types across the file and reparsing of publication year, volume, issue and pagination data
  
  
• No further distinction between major and minor Concept Codes

These enhancements add more information to BIOSIS Previews and greater consistency to the database resulting in more consistent search output.

Major File Implementation Enhancements

File enhancements include:

• A new superlabel BIZZ covering all BIOSIS Previews data from 1969 to date
  
  
• New database coverage to align BIOSIS Previews with the other major life science files: MEDLINE, EMBASE and Science Citation Index.
  
  • BIOL (previously 1993 to date) now covers 1996 to date
  • BIYY (previously 1970-1992) now covers 1993 to date
• New paragraphs TT (Original Language Title) and CF (Conference Information); these were previously included in the TI (Title). As a result, deduplication between BIOSIS Previews and the other biomedical databases will improve.
  
  
• Thesaurus mapping for the Diseases field (DS) is now available on Dialog DataStarWeb.

Other changes to a BIOSIS Previews record are:

• A new paragraph GN (Gene Name) for the sequence data accession numbers
  
  
• Some fields are no longer supplied by BIOSIS, including IR (Industry Terms), AI (Alternative Indexing), NA (Named Persons), though their content remains available in MI (Miscellaneous Descriptors)

Please refer to the November/December 2003 Chronolog for further information regarding these BIOSIS Previews enhancements, in particular the revisions of the Biosystematic codes. All changes relating to the Dialog DataStar implementation are documented on the Datasheet as well as in the Dialog DataStar Database of Databases, BASE. Search for BASE-BIOL.

If you need help editing your Alerts or have other questions about the changes, contact the Knowledge Center.

Search Tip...

MeSH Headings in BIOSIS PREVIEWS

BIOSIS Previews (File 5, 55) has MeSH headings; however, when searching BIOSIS for them, use a question mark (?) after the MeSH term to ensure retrieval.

     ?s breast neoplasms?
      S1    32500  BREAST NEOPLASMS?

     ?s breast neoplasms
      S3       19  BREAST NEOPLASMS 

Barbara Zimmerman
Knowledge Center

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