From: Jacob Zabicky (zabicky$##$bgumail.bgu.ac.il)
Date: Wed Sep 11 2002 - 05:52:36 EDT
Hello Eugen,
Two examples of searches I recently made to make reviews on the analytical
aspects of phenols and organolithium compounds may be quite illustrative.
The word "phenol" and its variants shuch as "phenolic" and "phenols" appear
in hundreds of not thousands of articles every year, but analytical
research on these compounds is very active, so, I used a search engine that
allows truncation and Boolean searches, Science Citation Index, searching
for "phenol* and (analy* or detect* or determin* or identif* or
character*)" in the TITLE only. This yielded a beutiful starting set from
the last decade, that was rounded-up here and there with sources cited
therein.
The same strategy was applied for "organolith*" and the outcome was rather
poor not to say disastrous. A little exploration showed that most
"analytical" research in the usual meaning of the word--not much of it--
was done in the 1960's. Therefore, the analytical information had to be dug
out from the discussion and experimental sections of publications on a
variety of subjects. In this case I ran SciFinder with one word,
"organolithium," collecting by year, for a couple of decades. In no case
did the crop reach 200 items, which can be readily reduced on perusal of
the titles and abstracts before going on collecting the original items to
work upon. For example, 2001 produced a little bit more than a score
references in the final work.
To sum it up, an appropriate search strategy depends on the volume of
information and nature of the subject. An a rule of thumb to be added:
Don't try to exhoust the information! The rule of diminishing returns turns
on you with a vengeance.
All the best,
Jacob
At 13:49 6/9/2, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>I'm currently working for a small company selling chemical reactions
>databases (a few million reactions). I'd like to increase our search
>engine ranking by putting relevant search phrases where they can be
>indexed, so people can find us more easily.
>
>Question: which search terms would a practical chemist (this means you)
>use who's looking to find chemical reaction/structure/spectral databases?
>I can think of a few, but I wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything
>obvious.
>
>Thank you very much in advance.
>
>Regards,
>Eugen Leitl
>
>
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Prof. Jacob Zabicky
Institutes for Applied Research
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Private: POB 12366, Beer-Sheva 84863
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