Tomov DT "Some critical remarks on the stop word lists of ISI publications" JOURNAL OF DOCUMENTATION 57 (6): 798-808 NOV 2001

[Eugene Garfield]

D.T. Tomov : dimtomov at yahoo.com


Title   Some critical remarks on the stop word lists of ISI publications
Author  Tomov DT
Journal JOURNAL OF DOCUMENTATION 57 (6): 798-808 NOV 2001

 Document type: Article  Cited References: 21   Times Cited: 0


Abstract:
A semantic analysis of the 'Weekly Subject Index Stop Word List' of Current
Contents of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as well as of the
full-stop word and semi-stop word lists of the Permuterm Subject Index of
Science Citation Index was carried out. Selected terms from the first issues
for 1997, 1999 and 2000 of the CCODAb/Life Sciences, of the first issues for
1997 and 2000 of CCOD Proceedings, as well as from the SCI CDE for 1997 and
January-June of 2000 were screened. True full-stop and semi-stop words
commonly occur in the dictionaries of these databases which proves that
there is an abundance of meaningless terms in titles and abstracts. On the
other hand, many synonyms and antonyms are absent in these lists. Proper
list enlarging could contribute to more effective preparation of both
printed reference publications and large databases thus ensuring a more
economic information retrieval by practical users and cientometricians. The
necessity of an improved, semantically oriented policy in preparing the
lists of full-stop words and semi-stop words used in modern databases
worldwide is emphasised. Journal editors should encourage authors to reduce
stop-word usage in article titles and keyword sets.

KeyWords Plus:
KEYWORDS

Addresses:
Tomov DT, Med Univ Varna, Lib & Informat Serv, 55 Marin Drinov St, BG-9002
Varna, Bulgaria
Med Univ Varna, Lib & Informat Serv, BG-9002 Varna, Bulgaria

Publisher:
ASLIB, LONDON

IDS Number:
486AW

ISSN:
0022-0418

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