Non-Patent Literature Searching:
Part I – The Publishing Industry and
Known Sources
Overview
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About Non-Patent Literature
Copyright: Influences toward free information
Digital Availability: Abstracting & Indexing Files
Commercial Vendors
– Aggregators
– Database-platform combos
– Publisher web sites
• Web Search
About Non-Patent Literature
Why don’t we have access to
more non-patent full text?
Copyright
The Publishing Industry
• Patents, by their very definition, are laid open
to the public
• Most sci/tech publications (such as journal
articles) are under copyright – and we need to
pay for access
• Why?
Simplified Life of a Journal Article
Author
• Writes and
submits journal
article for free
• Gains prestige,
career benefits
Journal Publisher
• Performs peer review
• Publishes article on
author’s behalf
• Recoups costs (and
makes profit) from
libraries/readers
Libraries/Readers
• Pay for access:
• Print copies of
journals
• Full text online
subscriptions
• Per-article basis
We pay for the right to access this information from publishers.
Influences toward Free Information
• The internet makes publishing easier:
– Open access movement is gaining steam
• Open access journals
• Institutional repositories
– Scholars bypass copyright (by posting PDFs to
their own homepages, for example)
Open Access (OA)
• Peer-review is a good thing, but it costs $
– Authors pay-to-publish in OA journals (Gold Road)
– Authors archive traditionally-published items in
Institutional Repositories (Green Road)
• You can find existing OA journals in Directory
of Open Access Journals (DOAJ):
– 4812 journals/1921 are searchable
• Find Repositories through OpenDOAR
Example Open Access Pilot:
Springer Open Choice
• 01/2009 - The California Digital
Library and Springer signed an
agreement
• UC-authored articles accepted
in most of the 1700 Springer
journals will be published
using Springer Open Choice
• This means full and immediate
access for all readers
However - right now, a vast body of
very important technical literature is
still under copyright
Interesting trend: Deepdyve
If $35 per article is too steep for you, you can read it once for 99 cents: after
one view, it disappears! Of course, no screenshots, that would be cheating!
Sad note: publisher participation is limited 
Lack of Digitization
Or, “It’s NOT online???”
Some scientific and technical
information only exists in print.
We’re finding this stuff now –
how?
Answer: Abstracting and Indexing
Files
Some History
• When computers were first introduced, data
storage was expensive.
• Online databases were constructed to help users
locate print resources in a library.
• These contained:
– bibliographic information
– abstracts
– human indexing
Abstracting and Indexing Files
• What are some valuable A&I (bibliographic)
non-patent files we use today?
• If they don’t contain full text, why are they
valuable?
– Historical
– Hand indexed
– Hand picked from important sources
Where do these files come from?
• Pop quiz: Who produces Inspec?
– The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
• Who produces Compendex?
– Ei, a division of Elsevier
• Who produces NTIS?
– US Federal Government (Dept of Commerce)
• Each of these producers gets to decide what
goes in their file (and what does NOT)
Search Platforms vs. Searchable Files
• Trick Question: Who produces the Engineering
Village file?
• Answer: Engineering Village is the name of a
software platform, not a data file
• Our subscription determines what data files
we have access to on Engineering Village.
Problems with A&I files
• We can’t search the full text
• We can’t read the full text
• We can’t know if these items will be valuable
to our customers.
• Should we still search these files? YES.
Important Data Files
You’ve heard of a few of these
before…
Inspec vs. Compendex
• Information Service for Physics,
Electronics, and Computing
• Computerized Engineering Index
• 11 million records
• Abstracts (not full text)
• Elsevier Engineering
Information (Ei)
• 11 million records
• Contains academic papers,
dissertations, patents,
conferences and more
• Contains academic papers,
dissertations, patents,
conferences and more
• Available on many
commercial platforms
• Available on many
commercial platforms
• Abstracts (not full text)
• Institution of Engineering
and Technology (IET)
Where do you access Inspec?
Where do you access Compendex?
Inspec vs. Compendex
“Inspec controlled term”
“Ei controlled term”
So what’s the difference?
Title List Comparison: Active and Inactive Titles
This comparison generated from self-reported data from the
two producers by the JISC-ADAT tool
The National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
• Most records include
abstracts
• Produced by US Dept of
Commerce
• 2 million records
• Unclassified reports
from influential US and
international govt
agencies
Where do you access NTIS?
• See Dialog Bluesheet
That’s it - these are the biggies, right?
NO – There are hundreds of technical files by subject.
We have more to say about
these files.
Our next session will cover A&I files
in-depth
Let’s talk about some available
commercial platforms
Aggregators vs. Platform-Database
Combos
What is an aggregator?
• A company builds a platform to give you
access to multiple A&I files, built by various
producers.
Old-School “Classic” Aggregators
Dialog Classic - Questel Qweb - STN
New Web Platform Aggregators
Common Platforms
• DialogPro, DialogSelect,
Dialog1
• Elsevier Engineering Village
• Ovid SilverPlatter
• EBSCOHost
• ProQuest
More Details…
• Often produced by
publishers themselves
• Sometimes independent
companies
• Does it ever make sense to
say “I searched Dialog?”
Dialog Products
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Dialog Classic: A legacy product (a dinosaur)
Owned by ProQuest
Far more data than the Library of Congress
Each file has its own producer and pricing
schedule (charges apply for connect time!)
• You can’t (and would not) search it all at once
• Dialog Bluesheets give individual db details
• We can access Dialog through any available
Dialog interface
Dialog Web
• We can access any file we already subscribe to
via Dialog Web for no additional charge
• As long as we access only those files we
subscribe to on a flat fee basis, we can search
Dialog through any available interface
• FYI: Dialog1, Dialog Select, Dialog Web, Dialog
Classic Web ….
• See Intellogist article on “Dialog Product Suite”
Files We Access on Dialog (Flat Fee)
• Inspec (1898-present)
• NTIS - National Technical
Information Service
• Dissertation Abstracts Online
• Transportation Research
Information Services (TRIS)
• Inside Conferences
• ICONDA - International
Construction Database
• PASCAL
• MEDLINE® (1950-present)
• FBO Daily – Archive
• FBO Daily – Current
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MathSci®
PAPERCHEM
TecTrends
Chemical Engineering and
Biotechnology Abstracts
Current Contents Search®
ITI Telecomms Reports
Investext® Archive
Asian Business Intelligence Reports
Investext® PDF Fulltext
Frost & Sullivan Market Intelligence
Frost & Sullivan Market Engineering
DIALOG Newsroom
Dialog Web
Don’t jump in without training! You can rack up charges.
Free practice available with practice IDs
We’ll cover this in further detail next week
Dialog through DialogPRO
• Many of you have accessed…
• Flat fee – but slow and inflexible
• Each form searches specific
Dialog databases
• General Research tab: Inspec,
Pascal, and “Current Contents”
• Selecting the small blue “i” icon
will give you details for each
search form
The General Research Form
in Dialog Pro
Other Dialog Interfaces
Dialog Select
Dialog1
ProQuest
• ProQuest owns a company called CSA,
formerly Cambridge Scientific Abstracts ->
they produce technical databases
• Many of these DBs are also loaded on Dialog
• Free at the PTO Search Room if you have your
own laptop?!? The entire library?
• Explore CSA databases
• Explore CSA deep indexing on selected dbs
• CSA Illumina is another platform (not shown)
Example: CSA Deep Indexing
• AGRICOLA
– Free at National Agricultural Library
– Available with “Deep indexing” from CSA
• “Deep indexing” as used by CSA means records are
enhanced with info about, and thumbnails of, tables
and figures.
• Full explanation available on CSA website
Free Record from NAL
Record with Deep Indexing from CSA
ProQuest
List of Products Available at PTO
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ProQuest – FULL LIBRARY
IEEE
Springerlink - Full text access available.
EBSCO – See slide 45 for details.
NIST
Journal of Applied Physics – American Institute of
Physics
• ACS – American Chemical Society
Special thanks to Larry Marcoux for obtaining this information!
EBSCOhost
• EBSCO is a publisher (like Elsevier)
• EBSCOhost is their aggregator platform
• EBSCO is also a database producer:
– “Academic Search” and “Business Source”
proprietary databases, which include searchable
*FULL TEXT* from EBSCO journals
• Unfortunately the full text content is hard to
pin down –not focused on science/technology
Another product, EBSCO Integrated Search, is a federated search platform, but
we’ll get to that later.
EBSCO
Overall number of titles (active and inactive)
DATABASE
TITLES
Business Source Complete
25,696
Academic Search Complete
11,274
Business Source Premier
9,880
Academic Search Premier
8,561
Full text titles (active only )
DATABASE
TITLES
Business Source Complete
7,207
Academic Search Complete
6,098
Business Source Premier
5,815
Academic Search Premier
3,711
Source: JISC-ADAT
EBSCO Databases Available at PTO
Special thanks to Larry Marcoux for obtaining this information!
Ovid SP
• Offered by Wolters Kluwer Health (publisher)
• Does offer Inspec and other STM data files
• Does offer a full text database
– “Ovid Full Text”
– Primarily health-related journals
• Libraries can integrate data records with links to
their subscription full text holdings
Ovid SP
Engineering Village
• Elsevier’s aggregator
• Only offers 13
databases – many of
these are produced by
Elsevier itself.
• Compendex & Backfile
• Inspec & Backfile*
• NTIS*
• GeoBase
• GeoRef*
• Ei Patents
• Referex
• PaperChem
• Encompass LIT and PAT
• Chimica
• Chemical Business News
Bold = included in our subscription
*Database is not produced by Elsevier
Database-Platform Combos
The following products are NOT
aggregators (as of right now)
ISI Web of Science
• Three Major Databases (no full text):
– Science Citation Index
– Social Sciences Citation Index
– Arts & Humanities Citation Index
• All of these databases are produced by
Thomson Reuters; publisher-neutral
• Part of larger “Web of Knowledge” product
• Important feature:
– Journal and Author Impact Factors
Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
on ISI Web of Science
SCOPUS
• Elsevier’s massive mega-database of abstracts
and bibliographic records
• Any publisher can be included (you can bet
Elsevier publications are)
• Links to third party publishers’ websites,
where you can buy the article
– (some full text may be available)
• Major libraries can implement links to their
own full text journal subscriptions online
SCImago Journal Rankings on Scopus
Scopus and ISI WoS are the major
competitors
Title List Comparison: Active and Inactive Titles
This comparison generated from self-reported data
from the two producers by the JISC-ADAT tool
Publishers and their Web
Databases
Or, you mean I have to buy a copy??
Publisher Search Sites
• Publishers have begun selling individual
articles directly to consumers
– library is no longer the middleman
– Free searching is available, often through full text
(but you still pay to view FT)
• Should have complete runs of journals in most
cases: they want you to buy article copies
• The downside to using these sources is that
you’re only searching one publisher
ScienceDirect (Elsevier)
• A database of Elsevier journals
• Full text is available/searchable for at least
some of the titles
– search form will search the full text
• Around 9000 titles
• Use for investigating individual articles more
closely
Wiley Interscience (Wiley)
• 1500 Journals – 767 are • Journals
Science, Technology, or • Online Books
Medical (STM) topics
• Chemical and Medicinal
Databases
• Reference Works
• Laboratory Protocols
SpringerLink (Springer)
• Over 1,250 journals and
more than 10,000
books
• Online Archives
(historical scientific
research)
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Journals
Books and Book Series
Reference Works
Protocols
Chinese Library of
Science
• Russian Library of
Science
Taylor & Francis
• Produce the CRC series
• CRCnetBASE is their directory of textbooks by
subject area
• Perhaps you’ve heard of CRC ENGnetBASE
– Engineering Handbooks Online
• There are “netBASEs” for lots of subject areas
• Search for free, pay to access
IEEE Xplore
• IEEE Xplore is a “digital
library” – definition?
• 2,590,153 documents
• IEEE produces 1/3 of
world’s literature in
– Electrical engineering
– Computer science
– Electronics
• Books published in
conjunction with Wiley
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Journals & Magazines
Conference Proceedings
Books
Standards
Educational Courses
Technology Surveys
Provides access to
content from other
publishers through
CrossRef & Scitopia
There are many more specialized
publishers out there.
Example: ACS journals
We’ll capture more of these in later
sessions.
Web Search Engines
A Word about Grey Literature
• “Grey literature”: not formally published
• Exists in academia, business and government
– Academia: theses, dissertations, etc.
– Businesses: product brochures, in-house research
– Government: memoranda, reports, etc.
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Institutional Repositories – OpenDOAR
Web search – Google Scholar, Scirus, etc.
ArXiv.org – contains some “pre-prints”
Upcoming sessions will have more info
Federated Search
• Means a search form
that can go out on the
web and put data into
other search forms
• Google can’t interact
with other search
masks
• This hidden world of
data is called “Deep
Web”
• Science.gov - over 40
databases and over
2000 selected websites
• WorldWideScience.org
– Global Sources
• ScienceResearch.com –
Federated search of
both sources
• TechXtra – federated
search of 33 databases
Specialized Web Search Engines
• Attempt to filter
unwanted content on
the Web by only
indexing certain types
of information
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Google Scholar
Scirus
Scitopia
Microsoft Academic
Search
Semantic Search is Coming
(maybe)
• “Web 3.0”
• Search engines may someday be able to
understand and anticipate what you want
• Controlled vocabulary searching may someday
become less necessary
• That day is a long way away
• See the resources in the Notes section of this
slide to learn more
In Conclusion..
Consider
• We call it “non-patent” literature – what does
everybody else call it?
• The digital age is still new
• The publishing industry is changing rapidly
• Search technologies are changing rapidly
• Physical libraries offer a world of free full text
access unavailable on the web
Vocabulary
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Open Access
A&I Files
Bluesheets
Aggregators
Publisher Website Search
Grey Literature
Federated Search
Deep Web
Summary
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Check DOAJ for open access journals related to your search topic.
Find institutional repositories by locating academic departments of interest using
OpenDOAR.
Find individual researcher websites.
Search A&I resources:
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When you need to view the full text of a specific article to determine relevancy:
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Compendex, NTIS, and Inspec using Engineering Village including indexing functionality
Dialog using Dialog Web and search the files appropriate to your technology via Bluesheets
ProQuest using the free access at the USPTO search room and identifying appropriate files by CSA Fact
Sheets
Use Science Direct, Wiley Interscience, or SpringerLink depending on the publisher of the article
Use DeepDyve
Conduct a THOROUGH web search using more than just Google – use ALL of these
federated web searches:
– ScienceResearch.com
– Google Scholar
– TechXtra
– Scitopia
– Scirus
Thank you!