ISI Parser Source Files

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Sheri,
 
I uploaded a new version of isi.exe at
http://www.leydesdorff.net/software/isi.exe
<blocked::http://www.leydesdorff.net/software/isi.exe>  which includes the
fields SC and ID. If anybody uses it and finds a bug, please, let me know. 
 
Best wishes, 
 
Loet


  _____  

From: Sheri Ross [mailto:slw04f at fsu.edu] 
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 7:13 PM
To: 'Loet Leydesdorff'
Subject: ISI Parser Source Files



Dear Dr. Leydesdorf,

Hello again from Florida State.  I hope you are well.  I have been busy
downloading data from ISI and parsing it with your program.  I noticed that
the parser does not pull out the keyword and subject information.  I'd like
to try to find a way to include these (SC and DE, and maybe ID) in the CORE
output file.  This type of data has a lot of analytical potential, I think. 

Last June, you offered to send me the source files.  Would you please do so?
I'm certainly not a computer scientist, but I'm hoping it will be a matter
opening a text file, finding the correct pattern of code, copy/pasting a
section, and then replacing the field abbreviations.  If it's more
complicated than that - and it probably is - then, I'll try to get one of
our tech-focused faculty to assist me.

Also, there are a number of mystery fields with numerical data, e.g. BP, EP,
AR, PG, GA.  I've not been able to match them to anything in the displayed
record, nor have I been able to find a key to explain what they mean.  Do
you know where I might find such a key?

Thank you very much,

 

Sheri

 

Sheri V. T. Ross

Doctoral Candidate

College of Information

Florida State University

 

 <mailto:slw04f at fsu.edu> slw04f at fsu.edu

 


  _____  


From: loet at leydesdorff.net [mailto:leydesdorff at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Loet
Leydesdorff
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 1:45 PM
To: 'Sheri Webber'
Subject: RE: Please lend your expertise

 

Dear Sheri, 

 

Take a look at http://www.leydesdorff.net/software/isi . My program parses
out the journal field from the Cited References in a separate column. I use
it often. If it does not work, let me know. Then, we can make it working.

 

The various files are dBase files (old-fashioned), but they can be related
using MS Access. It saves you a lot of cutting-and-pasting and therefore
unavoidably errors. You can have the source files if you wish.

 

With best wishes, 

 

 

Loet


  _____  


Loet Leydesdorff 
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 
loet at leydesdorff.net  <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> ;
http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 

 

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  _____  


From: Sheri Webber [mailto:slw04f at fsu.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 7:29 PM
To: loet at leydesdorff.net
Subject: Please lend your expertise

Dear Professor Leydesdorff,

 

I am preparing my dissertation prospectus and would like to confirm that the
means of data collection that I am proposing is the most efficient
available.  I hope you will be kind enough to read the following few
paragraphs and share your expert knowledge of ISI data sets.  I am a
librarian and a social scientist, not a computer scientist.  However, for my
dissertation, I am conducting a quantitative journal use study to lay the
groundwork for future qualitative research.  My few colleagues who have
worked with citation data believe that my approach is the only possible -
but, I want to be certain.

 

I am interested in the frequency of citations made to all ISI journals by
national groupings of authors (120 countries) each year over a period of
eight.  The journal abbreviations in the cited works field in the ISI record
are matched against those in a journal table in Access which allows me to
query citations (according to country and/or year) to journals with certain
characteristics (place of publication, for instance).  This all works fine.
The collecting and organizing of the cited works data however, is time
consuming as the raw article-level ISI file doesn't seem to lend itself to
ready analysis- even simple ones.  

 

This is how I proceed.  I conduct a search on country of author and limited
by year.  So, I receive all articles published by Nigerian authors in 2001,
say.  I import the file(s) to Excel, highlight the cited works column, and
copy it.  I then paste it into a text file and perform several find and
replace tasks.  I then import the cited works data into a new Excel
worksheet and do a few sort/cell insert routines in order to correct for an
apparent lack of place holders for empty fields.  I add a column for the
country and the year and the file is ready for import into Access.  Again,
this all works fine - I have Macros set up.

 

It would be optimal to get as much of the original article level-data into
my Access database as possible.  This would allow me to add finer levels of
analysis, querying by institution or author, for instance.  From the ISI raw
data set, I envision a related database with an author table, an institution
table, a citations table and an article table that links them all together.
However, I don't know how to get the data from its compressed format in
Excel to a more usable format in Access in a reliable and efficient way.
Like the cited works field, there are often multiple entries within the
cell, and sequence relationships are also an issue.  I don't have the
technical expertise to do this type of mapping.  Is there software available
that automates this process or perhaps you could suggest a different
approach? 

 

Thank you so much for reading all the way through my email.  If you have any
suggestions at all, I would be humbled if you would share them with me.

 

Sheri

 

Sheri V. T. Ross

Doctoral Candidate

College of Information

Florida State University

 

slw04f at fsu.edu

 

 

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