SPECIAL ARTICLE Editing, Writing & Publishing http://dx.doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2016.31.5.660 • J Korean Med Sci 2016; 31: 660-673 Specialist Bibliographic Databases Armen Yuri Gasparyan,1 Specialist bibliographic databases offer essential online tools for researchers and authors Marlen Yessirkepov,2 who work on specific subjects and perform comprehensive and systematic syntheses of Alexander A. Voronov,3 evidence. This article presents examples of the established specialist databases, which may Vladimir I. Trukhachev,4 be of interest to those engaged in multidisciplinary science communication. Access to most 5 6 Elena I. Kostyukova, Alexey N. Gerasimov, specialist databases is through subscription schemes and membership in professional 1,7 and George D. Kitas associations. Several aggregators of information and database vendors, such as EBSCOhost 1Departments of Rheumatology and Research and and ProQuest, facilitate advanced searches supported by specialist keyword thesauri. Development, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust Searches of items through specialist databases are complementary to those through (Teaching Trust of the University of Birmingham, multidisciplinary research platforms, such as PubMed, Web of Science, and Google UK), Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley, West Midlands, Scholar. Familiarizing with the functional characteristics of biomedical and nonbiomedical UK; 2Department of Biochemistry, Biology and Microbiology, South Kazakhstan State bibliographic search tools is mandatory for researchers, authors, editors, and publishers. Pharmaceutical Academy, Shymkent, Kazakhstan; The database users are offered updates of the indexed journal lists, abstracts, author 3Department of Marketing and Trade Deals, Kuban profiles, and links to other metadata. Editors and publishers may find particularly useful State University, Krasnodar, Russian Federation; source selection criteria and apply for coverage of their peer-reviewed journals and grey 4Department of Technological Management, Stavropol State Agrarian University, Stavropol, literature sources. These criteria are aimed at accepting relevant sources with established Russian Federation; 5Faculty of Accounting and editorial policies and quality controls. Finance, Department of Accounting Management, Stavropol State Agrarian University, Stavropol, Keywords: Abstracting and Indexing as Topic; Editorial Policies; Periodicals as Topic; Russian Federation; 6Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Stavropol State Agrarian University, Publishing; Information Retrieval; Bibliographic Databases; Systematic Reviews Stavropol, Russian Federation; 7Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK SEARCHING FOR SPECIFIC SCHOLARLY INFORMATION Received: 18 February 2016 Accepted: 18 February 2016 Searching through bibliographic databases and retrieving relevant sources are essen- tial for writing articles in an unbiased and systematic way. Systematic searches are be- Address for Correspondence: coming prerequisites of scientific authors’ professional behavior in the current era of Armen Yuri Gasparyan, MD Departments of Rheumatology and Research & Development, information deluge. Researchers and authors may improve their referencing and writ- Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust (Teaching Trust of the University of Birmingham, UK), Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley ing skills by securing access to reputable bibliographic databases, search platforms, di- DY1 2HQ, West Midlands, UK rectories, institutional repositories, and libraries. By cooperating with information fa- E-mail: [email protected] cilitators, authors may advance their understanding of various search tools and be more selective with regards to a large amount of relevant available references (1,2). Current search strategies depend on the scope of scholarly articles and covered sub- ject categories. Evidence pointing to the most comprehensive and reliable databases for different disciplines is scarce. The guidance is largely based on empirical expert opinion and some of the recent analyses of search strategies presented in systematic reviews. The main principle of comprehensive searches is to avoid relying on any sin- gle, even highly reputable bibliographic database (3,4). For most scientific, technical and medical disciplines, Scopus and Web of Science are often recommended as platforms for retrieving and analyzing quality items (5). Both are highly selective and well-organized multidisciplinary abstracting and cita- tion-tracking databases characterized elsewhere (6). Google Scholar, the largest multi- disciplinary platform, is frequently employed for initial searches by most authors, par- ticularly for navigating to full-texts of journal articles and grey literature (7-10). Howev- er, some experts are critical of the Google approach because of its low specificity for lo- cating relevant primary sources (11) and its low functionality for structured systematic searches (12). Given the limitations of multidisciplinary databases and platforms, systematic and © 2016 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences. pISSN 1011-8934 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. eISSN 1598-6357 Gasparyan AY, et al. • Specialist Bibliographic Databases comprehensive evidence syntheses are increasingly encom- abstracts, and keywords. Reference lists are also scanned, but passing specialized bibliographic databases, which cover not their format, language, and visibility are not scrutinized in a way just peer-reviewed sources, but also books, dissertations, tech- the global citation-tracking databases require. Full-texts of arti- nical documents, guidelines, and other grey literature items cles are archived by counterparts of some databases (e.g., CI- (13,14). MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library are of- NAHL Plus with Full Text®). To help retrieve relevant sources, ten referred as the main biomedical evidence-based search op- the databases are usually integrated with advanced search en- tions (15,16). However, the current trend of multi-, cross-disci- gines and organized vocabularies of professional keywords (e.g., plinary, and multicenter research necessitates referring to ser- Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, Engineering Index vices of a wide variety of global specialist bibliographic data- Thesaurus, GeoBase Subject Index). Some database vendors bases. offer their own advanced search engines (e.g., EBSCOhost, Pro- With the growing list of databases also comes a tendency of Quest). referring to irrelevant, or even erroneous, information that re- The main indexing criterion of specialist databases is rele- veals the lack of understanding of the functionality of search vance. Sources from all over the world are eligible for coverage. tools. As a prime example, Directory of Open Access Journal However, the selection of periodicals requires careful evalua- (DOAJ) is sometimes listed in search strategies of reviews as a tion of the functionality of the journal websites, assigning of Digi- bibliographic search tool (17,18) although it is known as a white- tal Object Identifiers (DOI), quality control models (peer review), list of open-access journals with incomplete links to papers (19). ethical editorial policies, copyright licenses, readability of Eng- The aim of this article is to overview some of the specialist lish abstracts, and other attributes of the ‘legitimate’ scholarly databases employed by authors in their evidence-based articles sources. Introducing strict selection criteria for most specialist and targeted by journal editors with interest in specialized fields indexing services is gaining importance at the current time of of science. proliferation of ‘illegitimate’, or ‘predatory’, journals, which aim to legitimize their practices by getting expanded indexing status MAIN FEATURES OF SPECIALIST DATABASES (20). Fortunately, some of the specialist databases introduced strict selection criteria to cover selectively highly relevant quali- Specialist databases are predominantly subscription-based on- ty periodicals (e.g., PsycINFO®). Well organized databases dis- line products that serve academic interests of professionals work- play publicly their lists of journals (Box 1), which give an impres- ing in their narrow fields of science. Most of these databases are sion of the scrutiny of the source evaluation and guide new source launched by reputable professional associations, such as the applicants. American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the American Economic Association CHEMISTRY (AEA), among others. To better serve the interests of their users, specialist databases aim at indexing not only journals, but also Chemical Abstracts Service (https://www.cas.org/) online books, conference proceedings, dissertations, patents, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) is the bibliographic database government documents, and other grey literature items. Com- of the American Chemical Society (ACS), which is available for prehensive coverage is perhaps the main difference between searches through the STN (Scientific & Technical Information specialist and multidisciplinary databases. In line with this, rel- Network) and SciFinder platforms. It is one of the oldest schol- evant articles from general, non-specialized