Interoperability - subject classification/terminology

[J. Hartley]

Colleagues interested in this debate might like to have a copy of our paper
'How useful are 'key words' in scientific journals' published in J. Info.
Sc., 2003, 29, 5, 433-438.

James Hartley & Ron Kostoff

(Copies available from j.hartley at psy.keele.ac.uk)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
To: <SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU>
Sent: 15 November 2003 21:03
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Interoperability - subject
classification/terminology


> On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote:
>
> > Stevan Harnad says:
> >
> >s> Please remember that most researchers currently search their abstracts
databases
> >s> and their toll-access journal content databases without the help of
any subject
> >s> classification taxonomies. This will continue to be the case for the
open-access
> >s> full-text database, once it grows to a significant size. Journal
articles --
> >s> especially when they include inverted full-text -- are not, and never
> >s> were, searched via prepackaged subject classifications or taxonomies
> >s> or aggregations.
>
> > I think that Stevan is a little too sweeping in his generalisation here.
In the
> > days before machine searching, pretty well all abstracting journals were
> > organized according to some subject specific classification scheme:
Chemical
> > Abstracts, Metallurgical Abstracts, Nuclear Science Abstracts are among
those I
> > searched on behalf of scientists in that dim and distant past. At that
time
> > users certainly relied upon those classification schemes to help them to
reduce
> > the volume of material they needed to search.
>
> I agree completely. But we are now in the days of machine searching, done
by the
> researchers themselves, for themselves, google-style. When search is
restricted to
> the inverted full-text corpus of the annual 2.5 million articles published
in the
> planet's 24,000 refereed journals, there is no need whatsoever to rely on
> classification schemes.
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#26.Classification
>
> > Those classification schemes
> > continue today in the print versions and online versions generally offer
the
> > possibility of a search by class.
>
> Yes, but does anyone bother to use them (online)?
>
> > The debate about the cheapness of simplistic
> > Boolean searching (which puts the costs on the user to disentangle the
useful
> > from the useless) versus the cost (to the producer) of high quality
subject
> > indexing and classification has never been settled - and doubtless never
will
> > be.
>
> But one thing is sure: It is irrelevant to the issue of open access, and
certainly
> not something to wait for!
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> > ___________________________________________________
> > Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD
> > Publisher/Editor in Chief
> > Information Research
> > InformationR.net
> > University of Sheffield
> > Sheffield S10 2TN,  UK
> > e-mail: t.d.wilson at shef.ac.uk
> > Web site: http://InformationR.net/
> > ___________________________________________________
> >