I was interested in attending this event because I
do not use WoK frequently and needed to know more about it before promoting it
further within the Faculty and to the PhD students.
The agenda for the event covered the following
topics.
Search
engine and navigation enhancements
>> you can now use ‘left-hand truncation’.
For example: *saccharide retrieves
polysaccharide/sialylsaccharide/eligosaccharide.
Alerting
enhancements
>>if you have a personal account for WoK you
can now renew all your search and citation alerts simultaneously.
Author
identification enhancements – improved author finder tool and ResearcherID now
searchable across WoK
>> an updated Author Search option in the
Web of Science guides you through a series of steps that are designed to
disambiguate common author surnames. You type in a surname and initial; select
the author’s research domain and then choose their organisation from the list.
This search might be useful if you are looking up an author and you have some
background information on them. As a warning, this search is only as good as
the information you have available on the author and frankly is rather fiddly.
>> try the Author Search by looking for
Stephen Hawking.
Cited
reference enhancements
>> the Cited Reference links now display the
full reference of the citing article – so it has more in common with the Cited
by links in Google Scholar.
ResearcherID
and ORCID integration
>>For me, this was the most interesting
piece of information gained at the workshop. Researchers can set up a personal
ResearcherID (basically a code that is unique to them; the code is attached to
all their research output indexed in the WoK). This ResearcherID only works in
WoK however a new ID option is gaining popularity – ORCID (Open Researcher and
Contributor ID).
ORCID is rapidly becoming the preferred ID option
because it can be used across multiple database platforms rather than just
WoK. So if a researcher has an article
indexed in WoK or Medline their ORCID will be displayed in both databases –
allowing the researcher to get maximum exposure and for readers to follow ORCID
links and see the researcher’s full output. ORCID allows researchers to attach
their ID to their research output. See http://about.orcid.org/
Introduction
to the new Data Citation Index
>>This is a new database in WoK – it provides
a single point of access to research data from repositories across disciplines and around
the world. Most of these repositories contain data sets such as statistics
about ice and snow levels from The National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
Essentially it offers access to sets of data which can be used in research.
Most (but not all) of the repositories seem to be freely available so the Data
Citation Index acts like a resource discovery tool.
>>Apparently there is no standard way to
reference data sets so WoK provides a recommended way of citing the data.
In summary
There was a lot of jargon – taxonomic; supatax;
DCI record; geospatial field….. this was a little tiring and not something that
you could engage students with. The event was not particularly interactive –
the group followed the presentation on their computers and then did a short
worksheet. We sat in regimented rows and I only managed to speak to two other
people! However, it was comforting to see that live demos can be problematic
for everyone – search results looking different and resources on a go-slow.
I’m not convinced that undergraduate students
would find this level of detail useful however there are some items that will
be relevant to the PhD students – I will be investigating
the ORCID scheme further as this seems most relevant to the students I support.
