Primary Literature: Publication of Information

• Publication is, as the name implies, the making public of information, by whatever means -- oral, printed or electronic.
• Publication has become a means not only for disseminating information, but also a tool for evaluating a scholar's performance: "Publish or perish."

Types of Publication

• Journals
• Technical Reports
• Patents
• Conference Papers
• Dissertations
• and a recent addition...Electronic Publications

Scientfic Journals

Types of Journals

• Nature; Science
  Very broad, covering all of science (more or less...)
• Journal of the American Chemical Society; Physical Review Letters
  Covering all of a major section of science, such as chemistry, biology or geology.
• Journal of Organic Chemistry; Journal of Biological Chemistry
  Covering a major subsection of science, such as organic chemistry or solid state physics
• Biological Mass Spectrometry; Fullerene Science and Technology
  Covering a highly specialized area of research.

Types of Journals

• News and reviews: Science News; Chemical & Engineering News
  These magazines specialize in short summaries of "hot" current research, usually in language aimed at the non-specialist, written by professional journalists (with some scientific background) rather than by professional scientists.
• Major reviews: Accounts of Chemical Research; Chemical Reviews
  These journals specialize in longer articles summarizing the research in a particular field, usually over a specified chronological range. These are generally written by scientists who are expert in the field.
• Major original papers: Dalton Transactions; Tetrahedron
  These journals (the majority of scholarly journals) carry full-length articles on original research.
• Brief communications: Tetrahedron Letters, Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry
  Some journals specialize in rapid publication of short announcements of research results.
• Mixtures of the above: Science; Nature
  Some journals carry several or all of the above types of articles.

Peer Review

• The majority of scientific journals publish peer-reviewed articles, also called refereed articles.
• In these journals, the editor sends submitted articles out to persons expert in the field of the article.
• The referee comments on the article and the research it presents.
• The editor then decides whether to accept the article as is, send it back to the author for revision, or reject it outright.
• Reviewing helps uphold scientific standards, but it adds to the delay between research and publication -- often a year between submission and publication.
• Note that electronic processing methods, such as e-mail of manuscripts between authors, editors and referees is speeding up the process. Some electronic versions of traditional journals (see ACS or RSC journals) publish on the Web before the print issue apppears.

The Librarian's Lament, or: "Why don't we own that title??"

• As research grows, both scholarly societies and commercial publishers increase the number and size of journals.
• Prices increase even faster.
  • More pages per issue, more volumes per year.
  • Costs of paper, printing increase, often dramatically.
  • Currency exchange rates can have a drastic effect.
  • The fatal spiral: prices go up, so subscribers cancel, so publishers raise prices to stay afloat. Repeat until the journal dies.
  • And, in some cases, publisher rapacity.
• Library budgets no longer keep pace.
• Situation becomes critical...with no clear solutions in sight. Electronic journals are not a solution by themselves - they address only the cost of printing. Production costs for e-journals, especially research and development, may be higher than for print journals.

Technical Reports

• Technical reports are an outgrowth of government-funded research.
• In return for funding, the government expects regular progress reports.
• These reports are published through the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) to give the public access to funded research.

Why use technical reports?

• They often have information before it appears in journal form -- but they're not peer-reviewed.
• Sometimes they contain data which appears nowhere else.

Accessing Technical Report Data

• NTIS indexes their own technical reports -- index available on Web: NTIS on NISC (1990-present, ucsb.edu only); CD-ROM (1983-1997 at SEL desk); online (1969-pres.); fiche (1964-present) and in print.
• Some agencies are putting up technical report indexes, or even the reports themselves on the Web
  • NASA Technical Reports Server at http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/NTRS
  • DOE Reports Bibliographic Database at http://www.doe.gov/dra/dra.html
  • DOE Information Bridge at http://www.doe.gov/bridge/
• Chemical Abstracts indexes technical reports...based on the NTIS indexes, so the indexing is more detailed for chemicals than the original NTIS indexing, but more lag time and the indexing is less detailed than CA give to journals..
• Technical reports are identified by report number, e.g. AD-A 211653, or DE90-006464. Some reports have more than one report number assigned. The user may have to check the NTIS indexes to verify the report number.
• UCSB owns many technical reports, especially from DOE and NASA. We can obtain others free of charge from the California State Library.

Patents

• Patents are a monopoly on the manufacture and sale of inventions granted by a government in return for the publication of the details of the invention.
• Patents may be assigned by the inventor to another person or corporation. Example: all patents for work done at the University of California are assigned to the UC Regents.
• Patents are the most important form of publication for industrial research.
• For more information on patents in general see also: InfoSurf: Patent Resources on the Internet at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/subjects/patents.html.

Patents as information sources

• sources of legal information - who owns the right to manufacture a given invention in a given country.
• sources of business information -- competitive intelligence -- What companies are working in a given field? Who are the prime inventors or experts in a field?
• sources of technical information.-they give the necessary information to replicate an invention.

Patents vs. other forms of intellectual property

• Patents cover tangible inventions.
• Copyrights apply to the expression of an idea -- literature, art, music...or software.
• Trademarks and Service Marks cover the recognizable symbols of a company, organization or product.
• Trade secrets are undisclosed inventions; theft is illegal, but...there is nothing to prevent a competitor from "reverse engineering" the product.

What may be patented?

• Machines -- includes means of production and consumer goods.
• Manufactures -- mainly consumer goods
• Designs -- e.g. packaging, decoration
• Plants -- agriculture, horticulture
• Processes -- including chemical ones
• Compositions of matter -- i.e. chemical substances

Requirements for patentability

• Novelty - The invention must be "new"; not existing in "prior art".
• Unobviousness -- The invention must not be obvious to an observer "skilled in the art".
• Utility -- The invention must be useful. You can't patent a compound; only a use for a compound.

Disclosure of patent information

• Explanation of the utility of the invention
• Enough detail so that someone "skilled in the art" could reproduce it
• Indication of the "best choice" if more than one alternative is described. (This frequently comes up in chemical and drug patents.)

Patents on the international level

• Patents are a government monopoly, so an inventor must apply in each country where such a monopoly is desired. Exception: European Patent Office allows application in multiple European countries at once. World International Property Organization (WIPO) streamlines application in multiple countries.
• Different countries have different rules on patentability and time of disclosure.
• Quick disclosure of unexamined patents (e.g. Japan) vs. disclosure of issued patents.(traditional U.S.)
• Patent laws are converging somewhat, due to the most recent General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)

Chemical Patents and Markush Structures

Accessing Patent Information

• Chemical Abstracts indexes patents with "new" chemical information, but only the first version received if the patent has been applied for in multiple countries. Fairly good detail on chemical information in patents.
• Special patent databases cover patents in other ways.
  • Several Web patent databases are available, with varying types of "added value" indexing, including:
    • The US Patent and Trademark Office has its own bibliographic database at http://patents.uspto.gov/. This site has full text (but no images) back to 1976.
    • The European Patent Office has Esp@cenet, which allows searching of European, WIPO, Japanese, and worldwide patents in general. Fulltext of patents is available free online for the last ten years. Earlier years are stored offline and may be ordered.
    • IBM has a free Web site called the IBM Intellectual Property Network at http://www.patents.ibm.com/ which allows search and display of US and European patents and WIPO patent applications back to 1974.
    • Questel/Orbit has a commercial site (QPAT) at http://www.qpat.com/ covering US and soon, European and WIPO patents. It also has links to lots of patent information on the Web. Questel-Orbit also is building a website with helpful information about patents: Qpio at http://www.questel.orbit.com/english/qiop/index4.htm. Qpio currently includes the archives of the Patent Information Users Group (PIUG) listserv.
    • Derwent offers a sophisticated Web search tool for US, European and WIPO (1974-present) and European (1978-present) patents in Patent Explorer at http://www.patentexplorer.com/. Access is currently free for searching and some display, but users must register. Derwent also has a very useful Patent Reference Centre at http://www.derwent.com/resource/frameset.html with information on the history and terminology of patents, as well as links to other patent information sources on the Web.
    • Chemical Abstracts Service has a commercial site (Chemical Patents Plus) at http://casweb.cas.org/chempatplus/ which adds CAS indexing to full-text chemical patents.
  • Derwent's World Patent Index collects all patents for the same invention into "patent families" and provides excellent indexing. For more information, see the Derwent web site at http://www.derwent.com.
  • IFI Plenum does value-added indexing of US patents.
  • Many patent databases exist for other specific patent offices - JAPIO, Chinapats, PATOSEP.
• The UCSB Library will order copies of patents for students, faculty and staff.

Conference Papers

• Papers presented at a conference are often the fastest way of publishing hot new information.
• But conference papers are often hard to locate in print; indexing can be slow, and they are not refereed in most cases.

Accessing Conference Papers

• Chemical Abstracts indexes conference papers in chemistry. Other indexes are specially devoted to conferences.
• Papers may be published as part of a journal, as a special monograph, or as part of a monographic series -- may require several tries on MELVYL or PEGASUS to locate some references. See guides to PEGASUS and MELVYL conference paper techniques.

Dissertations

• Dissertations and theses are a major form of academic publication.
• They often contain information, especially experimental detail, not reported elsewhere, or reported much later.

Accessing Dissertation Information

• Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI, published by UMI) indexes most North American and many European dissertations.
• UCSB users can access DAI as part of Digital Dissertations.
  Through ProQuest Digital Dissertations, UCSB users have free access to electronic copies of dissertations from all University of California campuses from 1997 to the present. Users may also order for a fee, electronic copies of other dissertations from 1997-present or print or microform copies from earlier years. Digital Dissertations also provides an index to dissertations from 1861 to the present.
• Note that the PDF copies of dissertations are very large (>1 MB and possibly hundreds of pages) and cannot be downloaded instantly. However, once a copy of a dissertation has been ordered from any ucsb.edu terminal, it may be retrieved from any Web-connected terminal within 72 hours using the URL and PIN number provided. So, a Digital Dissertations user can locate a UC dissertation from a computer in the Davidson Library, and download, view and print the file from the user's home or office computer later that day or the next day.
• Some dissertations can be obtained from their "home" campsu via InterLibrary Loan.
• As with technical reports, Chemical Abstracts gets dissertation info from DAI and adds chemical indexing..

Electronic Publishing

Types of Electronic Publication

• Bulletin boards (BBS)
  • Dial-up systems, often devoted to single topics.
  • One of the earliest forms of electronic networking.
• Listservs
  • Use e-mail to communicate.
  • Access by subscription
  • May be moderated; usually informal exchange of information.
  • May receive individual messages, or digests of a given period of time.
  • Many maintain archives of old messages, sometimes Web accessible.
  • For an extensive list of chemistry-related listservs, see Directory of Scholarly and Professional E-conferences: Chemistry at http://www.n2h2.com/KOVACS/S0023s.html
• FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
  • FTP software allows transfer of datafiles across the Internet.
  • Can be used to exchange text, graphics or software.
• Gopher
  • Hierarchical menu approach to finding and retrieving information.
  • Once one of the hottest things on the Internet, it has been largely superseded by the more flexible World Wide Web...
• WWW (World Wide Web) [You're using it now!!}
  • Uses hypertext-linked documents
  • Developed at CERN; made popular by free NCSA Mosaic Web-browser software.
  • Allows transfer of text, graphics, audio, video...and more.
  • Currently the hottest medium for electronic publishing.

Issues in Electronic Publishing

• Full text vs. page image - More specifically, is plain ASCII text better than HTML-formatted text or page images such as Postscript files or Adobe Acrobat PDF files.
• Individual publication vs. preprint servers vs. journals - Anyone can put a publication up on the web these days; so is the "filtering" mechanism of the big, traditional refereed journal still necessary? Some organizations have set up central servers for unrefereed papers. This has caught on big in some fields, notably physics and mathematics, but is still under discussion and controversial in others.
• Electronic equivalents of print journals (for example Journal of Biological Chemistry at http://www.jbc.org vs. pure electronic journals (such as Internet Journal of Chemistry at http://www.ijc.com) - Many traditional print journals are creating electronic editions, but some are trying to exploit the format to the fullest, with hypertext citations, integrated sound, animation and video, etc.

New Technology, New Problems

• Indexing -- Chemical Abstracts and some other services now index e-journals, but not all e-sources get indexed.
• Citation -- Standards for citing electronic publications are now coming out from various sources, but not everyone agrees.
• Archiving-- Electronic sources tend to be transient; archives are only beginning to be created.

"The Invisible College"

• Networking between scientists in a given field can be extremely important.
• Exchange of preprints, especially electronically, is growing rapidly.
• Being active in scholarly societies (e.g. ACS) and communicating with your colleagues is vital to stay on top of your field!

This page created by Chuck Huber (huber@library.ucsb.edu). Last modified: January 12, 2000.