Report:MMS/Viewing Results/Viewing Bibliographic Records

Viewing Bibliographic Records

The commands to switch from MMS to the bibliographic files in Questel is “..BI”, with two dots before the command. After issuing this command, the system will present a cost summary of the actions that were taken while in the system. An example of such a summary is below.

A cost summary is displayed after logging out of MMS.

To load the MMS records in Pharm, the command is “*MD savedname/CN”, where “savedname” is the name of the saved set of results that was previously defined in MMS. In DWPI, the command is a little different: instead of *MD, it is *MDARCLIST. In April 2012, Questel announced that the "*MDARCLIST command has been reactivated in the Questel bibliographic system."^[1] MMS staff always advises searchers to use the *MDARCLIST command in DWPI because this command automatically lists any WPIM/Frontfile CN numbers that were found to have no postings in the DWPI bibliographic file. There are only a small number of structures in the MMS structure database that are missing a corresponding bibliographic record, but when they do occur, Questel would like its users to report them so that Thomson Reuters (the producer of DWPI) may investigate and correct any missing structure-bibliographic correspondence information. (*MDARCLIST should only be used in DWPI, never in Pharm.)

Once the *MD or *MDARCLIST commands are successfully completed, the system will report how many corresponding records are present in the given database, and give the list of results a corresponding “search set” (SS) number.

A successful *MD command.

It is also possible to extract only generic or specific compound identifiers, or only compounds associated with a certain “role,” (e.g. therapeutically active substance, catalyst, etc) by using the following commands:

• MD listname /CN to process a list from Markush DARC
• MDARCLIST listname /CN to process a list and audit compound numbers with no postings (*MDARCLIST can be used in place of *MD for the following variations)
• MD listname.ROLE /CN to process a list of compound numbers from Markush DARC, limiting with a ROLE qualifier
• MD listname.R1.R2 /CN to process a list of compound numbers from Markush DARC, limiting with several role qualifiers (R1, R2,…: up to six roles)
• MD Ri /CN to process an R answer set from Markush DARC
• MD Ri.ROLE /CN to process an R answer set from Markush DARC, limiting with a role qualifier
• MD Ri.R1.R2 /CN to process an R answer set from Markush DARC, limiting with several role qualifiers (R1, R2,…: up to six roles)
• MEM field to process a memory list in the specified field
• MEMS field to process a memory sort list in the specified field

(For more information about MMS “roles,” see the Patent Coverage Introduction section.)

From here, the bibliographic records are ready to be viewed. Because records in both Pharm and DWPI are on a pay-as-you-go basis, a small cost is assessed for each record the user views. Additionally, mistaken “views” cannot be un-done, so an accidental “display-all” could be quite costly. Fortunately, in the case of MMS results sets, the user will probably always want to access data for every single relevant document, without any further refining of the search criteria. This is the reason that it is crucial to construct narrow search queries whenever possible – the per record display charge can be quite costly, especially if there is a lot of useless “noise” in the results set from an over-broad query.

To display the bibliographic records, there are many commands that can be combined to display the necessary combination of data fields (which may even include legal status or document images). Fortunately, Imagination also has a number of graphical user interface features, including a Display wizard under its Results tab that helps users to tell the system what range of documents they would like to see, and what display format they would like to use. The figure below shows a bibliographic record from Pharm that resulted from an MMS search. Note that a “view focus” command to see the indexed structures is not possible in the bibliographic files, so the user may have to order and view the document itself to understand its relevance to the subject search. Neither Pharm nor DWPI is a full text collection, so reading the full text of hit documents is not possible in these files (in addition, the user is charged by connect hour fees, which would make reading the full documents impractical during an online session).

A Pharm record corresponding to a CN number from an MMS search, displayed through Questel Imagination.

Extended potential display wizard options from the drop-down menu, including full text, legal status and image options.

For records viewed in certain display formats, the bibliographic fields may be expanded or collapsed using the + and – icons next to each field heading. This is a feature of Questel’s QWeb, a product with a command-line-interface patent searching environment. For a complete description of view/print/list commands and pre-defined display formats, see the related Questel on Imagination and Qweb articles.

Editor's Note:

Although viewing MMS results through Questel Imaginaton is made easier by conveniences such as the display wizard and collapsible record format discussed above, critics of Markush structure searching systems call for better display features that will allow users to more quickly understand the reason behind the patent hit.^[2] JChem's graphical hitlist and features like enumeration, Markush hit reduction, and highlighting (discussed in Compound Numbers and View Focus) can be viewed as a possible solution to these display issues.

Viewing Bibliographic Records in JChem

Users can view the MMS bibliographic records on the ChemAxon JChem platform in either Grid view or Form view. These options are selected in the upper left menu, above the Query form. Users can either select "Grid view for Inventions," which displays the bibliographic data on the Markush patent document in a spreadsheet-like format, or users can select the Form view, which displays both text fields and an image of the Markush structure.

The Form view of the Markush patent record in Instant JChem.

Sources

1. ↑ "Merged Markush Service (MMS) News ." Questel website, http://www.questel.com/News/mms_news.htm. Accessed April 9, 2012.
2. ↑ Berks, Andrew H. “Current state of the art of Markush topological search systems.” World Patent Information, vol. 23, p5-13. In the case of MMS, structure indexing can no longer even be viewed in the bibliographic portion of the system, eliminating the means for analysis of the search hit from a chemical structure perspective. 2001.