Report:Thomson Innovation/Search Interface/The Search Forms/Non Patent Literature Search Forms

Non-Patent Literature Search Forms

Based on the subscription package the individual user possesses, he or she may have access to the non-patent searching features in Innovation. These features consist of the Literature Search form, the Business Search form, and the combination search or "Search All Content" form.

Literature Search

The Literature Search enables the user to search through multiple scientific literature databases including Inspec, Web of Science, Conference Proceedings, and Current Contents Connect. Detailed descriptions of these databases can be found in the Data Coverage Summary section. The user can choose to do a literature search in either Fielded Search, Cited References Search, or Expert Search. A Fielded search is a standard search with fields such as author, "time span," language, and document type. The screenshot below shows the Fielded style of the Literature Search form. It should be noted that the contents of the drop-down menu containing the list of available fields changes dynamically, based on which collections are selected to be searched. Less fields are available if more collections are selected to be searched, since only some fields are common among all selected collections.

The Literature Search Form (Fielded Search)

A search in the Cited References mode will search for articles by cited author, cited work, or cited year. The following screenshot shows the Cited References style, which is only available for certain collections (Web of Science and Conference Proceedings):

The Literature Search Form (Cited References Search)

Finally, literature searching can be conducted through an Expert Search form, similar to the one used for the patent search tab. See Expert Search for more information.

The Expert Search Form for Literature Search

After the query is constructed and submitted, Innovation displays the Literature Search results in a list as shown in the screenshot below. The author, document type, organization, publication date, and source data points are displayed along the top of each record along with the title and abstract. The title of each record is hyperlinked and clicking on this link will open the record in Record View. Icons on the left side of each result indicate if the item is available in full text as open access, Custom Journal Sets, or if the item is available for full-text PDF purchase. The full-text PDF purchase option can be suppressed by a system administrator.^[1]

Literature Search Results

On the Literature Record View screen information such as bibliographic data, abstract, indexing and citation information are all prominently displayed. On the right side of the page, Innovation displays highlighted hit terms just as when searching patent content.

Literature Record View

Innovation also displays a large amount of metadata associated with the record, such as indexing information, publisher address, author e-mail address, etc. The question mark icons on the right side of each data field can be clicked for an explanation of each field. See the screenshot below:

Viewing Other Document Information in Literature Record View

Literature searches may be saved, and alerts may be created from these searches.

A number of search and viewing enhancements were added to the Scientific Literature section of Thomson Innovation in August 2012, including:^[2]

• Full Text Article Linking, Ordering, and Document Delivery - The full text of thousands of scientific literature articles is now available from within your Thomson Innovation work flows and accessible through our document delivery process. Full text articles available through Custom Journals Sets, Open Access Publications, purchasable PDF are present on both result sets and records. And OpenURL links and references are available whenever enabled.
• New Literature Search Fields - Funding Acknowledgement/Agency (for Web of Science and Conference Proceedings only), Standardized Subject Category (finds articles based on a single standardized subject category across multiple databases), IPC (for Inspec only), and Conference Information is now searchable in Web of Science (in addition to Conference Proceedings).
• Result Set Enhancements
  • Ascending and descending sort order is now available for Processing Date, Author, Source, Publication Date, and Times Cited (and can be set as your default in Preferences).
  • Publication Date and Processing Date have been disambiguated and can be separately selected for result set sort order. Processing Date is now the default sort order.
  • The full Publication Date (as opposed to the Publication Year) is now a default result set field.
  • New fields available for filtering on your result set: Organization, Standardized Subject Category (now a default filter field, can be changed in preferences), Publication Year, Funding Agency, Country/Territory.
• Authors Linked to Organization Addresses in Record View and Exports - An Organization Address on a record view or in an export now shows which authors (from that article/paper) are associated with which address. The author names are (as in the Author field) linked to generate a result set of all works by that author.
• Stopwords No Longer Blocked from Queries - Previously, you were required to honor a lengthy list of stopwords when creating your literature queries. Effective with the August 2012 release, stopwords, with the exception of words used as operators (AND, OR, NOT, SAME, and NEAR), no longer need to be avoided or enclosed in quotes.

Business Search

In addition to the science-oriented "Literature Search" collections, Innovation also offers a business, financial and news-oriented non-patent literature search collection, appropriately titled "Business Search." The four collections offered by the business search feature are the Company, Market, NewsRoom, and Research collections.^[3]

• Company - Used to find detailed data on companies of interest
• Market - Used to find industry and economic related information on companies or markets
• NewsRoom - Used to find breaking news, to keep current on continuing stories, to find information on regions of the world
• Research - Used to identify worldwide organizations conducting research or providing research services

See the Data Coverage Summary section for more detailed data for these collections.

The screenshot below shows the search interface for the business search form.

The Business Search Form.

The Business Search form is very similar to the patent search and literature search forms in design and function. Collections to be searched are chosen by selecting checkboxes along the top of the form (as shown in the figure above). After executing the search, the results from each collection are displayed separately, through the use of separate tabs for each hit list. In the figure below, a search was conducted in all four collections, and tabs separate the various result lists. The number of hits returned from each collection is shown in parentheses: the search in the Market collection returned 65 hits, the Company collection returned 2 hits, and the NewsRoom and Research collections returned zero hits.

Results of the Business Search.

Business Search results are divided into a tab for each collection searched (Company, Market, NewsRoom, Research). The number of results found in each collection is displayed in parentheses in each tab. Results within each tab are listed with a hyperlinked title which will take the user to a full record view.

The Business Record View (from NewsRoom collection) .

The available fields in a Business record vary depending on the collection. As an example, a standard Business record from the Newsroom collection (displayed above) will contain a title, publication name and date, copyright information, and lead paragraph, followed by the text of the article.

More information in the Business Record View.

The Business Record View also shows information such as (for records from the NewsRoom collection) document, language, word count, standardized company name, original company name, industry keywords, and more. Business searches may be saved, and alerts may be created from these searches.

Search All Content

Thomson Innovation Search All Content enables the user to search patent, literature and business content in a single search. The collections searched are specified beside step 1, "Review Selected Collections" (choose collections via check box). The availability of any of these content sets is determined by the terms of the user’s subscription. In other words, if a user’s subscription does not grant them access to the literature and business content, then the Search All Content feature will not be available.

To allow for effective searching across multiple content sets, Search All Content is based on a selection of only the most similar fields in each content set. Therefore, a search in Search All Content will be much more generalized than one performed only in a single content set.

Note: In Search All Content, result sets for each collection follow limitations based on your subscription level and the content type (e.g., 60,000 patent records displayed for Pro or Analyst users).^[4]

Below is a screenshot of the Search All Content form:

Search All Content Form.

After submitting the query, Innovation returns a results page containing up to three tabs, one for each area searched in the Search All Content form. Any combination of the patents, literature, and business collections can be searched during Search All Content. As the screenshot below illustrates, the number of results returned is displayed in parentheses inside of each tab. These tabs can then be switched between and browsed as desired by the user.

The Quick Search form (displayed above the All Content Result Set in the screenshot below) may also be used to search all content. Simply select "All Content" from the drop-down menu (other options are Patents, Publication Numbers, Literature, and Business), enter a keyword into the Quick Search form, and select "Go." Results are displayed as an All Content Result Set if "All Content" is searched.

Editor's Note:

The Quick Search option is displayed above all search forms and result sets and is an easy way to formulate a fast search within any or all collections. Users should utilize the Quick Search form with caution, since the date range searched in any collection from the Quick Search form is five years back starting the first day of the current year.^[5] If patents or publication numbers are searched through the Quick Search, Native Japanese Patents are never included in the search.^[5]

All Content Result Set (with Quick Search displayed above results).

A Search All Content page will be available to users who are subscribed to two or more of the three available Thomson Innovation data collections (Patents, Literature, and Business). For example, if a user was only subscribed to the Patents and Business collections (and not the Literature collection), Search All Content would still be available to that user, but only those two enabled collections would be available from it. For the Quick Search form, if your subscription does not allow you access to the literature or business collections, those options will not be shown in the dropdown.^[5]

Searches performed from the Search All Content interface or Quick Search form may be saved, and alerts may be created from these searches.

Sources

1. ↑ "Literature Full Text Articles: Linking and Ordering." Thomson Innovation help file, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/index.htm#patent_fields.htm. Accessed September 7, 2012.
2. ↑ "Scientific Literature Enhancements on Thomson Innovation (August 2012)." Thomson Innovation website, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/lit_enhance_2012.htm. Accessed September 7, 2012.
3. ↑ "Business Information Collections on Thomson Innovation." Thomson Innovation website, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/collections_business.htm. Accessed August 30, 2012.
4. ↑ "Search All Content Result Set." Thomson Innovation help file, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/cross_search_results.htm#overview. Accessed September 10, 2012.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2} "Quickly Search All Content." Thomson Innovation help file, http://www.thomsoninnovation.com/tip-innovation/support/help/quick_search.htm#quickly. Accessed September 10, 2012.