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Definition: periodical literature refers to the literature that is published in popular and scholarly journals, conferences, newspapers, reviews, and other materials that are issued periodically (e.g., monthly, weekly, quarterly). See ATEIS-Articles visual on how to find articles in general. Often periodical sources will announce papers reported at meetings as well as dissertations, patents, technical reports, and books even though these materials are not issued regularly or periodically. Why secondary sources? Since the primary engineering literature is voluminous, it would be difficult, if not impossible and certainly impractical, to track down information on just about any topic by scanning contents in individual journal titles. This problem has been solved in part by introducing secondary literature: periodical indexes and abstracts. Their purpose is to index primary periodical literature published in hundreds of sources, such as journals, magazines, newspapers, conference proceedings, monographic series, books, and book reviews. Indexes may cover all sciences (e.g., General Science Index), all engineering disciplines (e.g., Engineering Index), or specific scientific or engineering disciplines (e.g., Mathematical Reviews; Inspec). For their place in a larger engineering information space, see ATEIS visual that is referred to in EISA2 as ATlas of Engineering Information Sources, ATEIS. When to use indexes and abstracts? Periodical indexes are most useful when you want to find out if someone has published results discussing a new method, process, model, or application in a fairly specific research area of your interest. These results are technical in nature and are typically written in dissertations, conference papers, technical reports, journal articles, and patents. On the other hand, to get a feel for a topic, you will want to consult textbooks, encyclopedia articles, dictionaries, and handbooks. These are all good sources to get started. Bibliographies that are compiled by experts in a field are invaluable starting points. Of special value are annotated (and signed) bibliographies and surveys (e.g., ACM Computing Surveys, published 4 times a year in March, June, September, and December by ACM). One such source is ResearchIndex, formerly called CiteSeer. Not all papers are equally well regarded. Some are peer-reviewed by several experts before they get published. This process takes time, oftentimes up to 2 years; so, while the content is usually of high quality, it may not be as timely as we would like it to be. Depending on a field, some conference papers do not require as rigid peer-review process as most journals do. Familiarize yourself with the periodical literature in your field. It varies from discipline to discipline, even subspecialties vary. For example, you may find that in some specialties, certain conference proceedings rank as highly as journals. Examples of questions that are well answered in papers and accessed through periodical indexes and abstracts include:
Knowledge of data structures and nature of engineering sources Most engineering electronic sources (databases) have a print version. This helps you as a searcher in many different ways. For example, if your search is comprehensive, you might want to cover both current and retrospective literature that may not be available electronically as yet; knowing how far back you want to go is critical (time span).
Furthermore, if you can use search terms from controlled vocabularies (e.g., Library of Congress Subject Headings, Ei Thesaurus), this too, could improve precision of your searches. Controlled vocabularies are lists of official search terms that are used to describe and index documents by their subject matter consistently and predictably. If you use the same terms in your searching, chance that index terms and search terms will match increases significantly. This results in the increased retrieval of relevant documents. Printed and some online vocabularies indicate hierarchical relationships between terms so that you can search under broader terms (BT), narrower terms (NT), related terms (RT) or search also terms, as shown below. Other reference notes lead the searcher to search under, say, color in the ceramic industries rather than under coloring of ceramics. In general, all controlled vocabularies control: 1. Synonymous relationships (term X, use term Y, where term Y is the preferred term). 2. Homographs (via definitions, called scope notes (SN)). 3. Hierarchical relationships between and among terms (BT, NT). 4. Associative relationships (RT or search also) as the following example illustrate: Ceramics SEARCH ALSO Glass-ceramics
Another tip to keep in mind is the nature of publication life cycle in technical literature. For example, technical ideas are published in many different publication formats along the line of their life cycle; as they get developed, tested, and refined, results might first appear in a technical report, as a demo at a regional or national conference; later, the same project is presented as a conference paper; finally, you file your doctoral work and publish your dissertation; as a result, several journal articles are published, a monograph is announced, a chapter is written. Of course, time lag will vary depending on a given format. For you as a searcher, this means that you have many choices to explore in order to retrieve a particular idea. These are all examples of primary literature. How do you get access to these primary sources? Experts use secondary sources such as periodical indexes and abstracts. Examples are Engineering Index (printed Monthly and Annual), COMPENDEX (computerized Engineering Index), Ei Engineering Meetings, Energy Abstracts, INSPEC (Physics Abstracts, Electrical and Engineering Abstracts, Computer and Control Abstracts), Mathematical Reviews, Current Contents, and a wide variety of disciplinary periodical indexes and abstracts. Many of these collections are also known as databases or digital libraries. If you are a student, you will probably recognize many of these titles on your library catalog portal "free of charge". How To Evaluate Periodical Indexes and Abstracts The following is a checklist to keep in mind when using periodical indexes and abstracts: Coverage and Scope: Familiarize yourself with disciplines, subdisciplines, special areas as well as with list of journals indexed in a particular database. Keep in mind that each database indexes hundreds of periodical titles. Which formats are included? Are chapters of books covered? Are dissertations indexed? Are reviews included? Are workshops indexed? Advanced courses? Which languages are represented? |