Thursday, March 30, 2006

Scopus adds RSS-feed functionality in Spring release

A little later than EbscoHost did it, but Scopus has announced to release RSS-functionality in their SpringRelease due at April 5th http://www.info.scopus.com/springrelease/ powerpoint Only a few are worth mentioning: 3. New Subject Area Classification (see slides 7 and 8) "We have introduced a more granular level of classification for content in Scopus. There will be now 27 subject classifications instead of the current 11. These have been grouped into 4 broad subject areas; Life Sciences; Health Sciences; Physical Sciences and Social Sciences - for easier searching. Classification is at the journal, not article level and it is possible for one journal to have multiple classifications" I still don't think this is the strong part of Scopus. Classification at the journal level is not good enough, 27 subject areas is little better than 11, but they should find another way to do this. 6. Spelling Suggestions (see slide 13) "When zero search results are returned users will be offered an alternative spelling. This feature uses a scientific dictionary based on the language and content of Scopus to ensure that the suggestions are relevant" Always good to have some sort of interaction about the relevance of search terms (and/or chosen resources) 8. Article numbers (see slide 15) "Where a publisher uses article numbers as identification Scopus will now display the number which can then be used to cite, link and search. To search on article number the user must type ARTNUM in the advanced search box. For the user this will lead to improvements in citation counts and in full-text linking"This looks like an improvement if you are tracking citations, but in the mean time the user has to take extrastep'ss to make this happen. I wonder how many will find this easy to use. Command line searching is only for power-users and searchfreaks like librarians -;) Enhancements to the Scopus Citation Tracker 9. Citation Tracker changes (see slides 16 and 17) "Users will be able to link from the citation overview to the record directly by clicking on the article title. They will also be able to delete individual records from the citation overview and re-generate the overview itself. Users will be able to sort the citation overview by years (descending and ascending) and by number of citations (descending and ascending)". Now this is what everybody will like! They listened to the critics. RSS (Really Simple Syndication new feature! 11. RSS feeds (see slides 19 and 20) "Available from April 5th. From a results page users will be able to click an orange RSS icon to add the query to their RSS reader. They will then receive daily updates of query results direct to their desktop, without overloading their e mail inboxes. If they don't already have an RSS reader once they click on the 'RSS' icon they can link to a site to download one. Scopus supports desktop and online RSS readers" Now they are talking! According to Randy Reichhardt the EbscoHost RSS feature is only a 17-steps away from the user. The Scopus one promises the feature right on the Result Page.

No comments: