“The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.” -- Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Essayist, Poet and Author 1850-1894)
Patterns are important, and they can help manage the results of all the online searching we do. Here’s a tip that may help … Find/Replace.
Take, for example, the results of a recent ScienceDirect (www.ScienceDirect.com ) search for recent desulfurization articles. Using ScienceDirect’s advanced page, I restricted the search to articles published in 2010. I still got over a hundred hits, a few of which appear below …
///////
1.
Experimental study on desulfurization efficiency and gas–liquid mass transfer in a new liquid-screen desulfurization system
Applied Energy, Volume 87, Issue 5, May 2010, Pages 1505-1512
Zhongwei Sun, Shengwei Wang, Qulan Zhou, Shi’en Hui
2.
Modeling and experimental study on multi-level humidifying of the underfeed circulating spouted bed for flue gas desulfurization
Powder Technology, Volume 198, Issue 1, 20 February 2010, Pages 93-100
Min Tao, Baosheng Jin, Wenqi Zhong, Yaping Yang, Rui Xiao
3.
Deep desulfurization of model gasoline by selective adsorption on Ag+/Al-MSU-S
Catalysis Today, Volume 149, Issues 1-2, 15 January 2010, Pages 138-142
Chunmei Meng, Yunming Fang, Lijun Jin, Haoquan Hu
4.
Desulfurization matching with coal poly-generation system based on dual gas resources
Fuel, Volume 89, Issue 4, April 2010, Pages 833-837
Ju Shangguan, Maoqian Miao, Liping Chang, Fan Li, Kechang Xie
5.
Simultaneous dry reforming and desulfurization of biomethane with non-equilibrium electric discharge at ambient temperature
Chemical Engineering Science, Volume 65, Issue 1, 1 January 2010, Pages 487-491
Yasushi Sekine, Junya Yamadera, Masahiko Matsukata, Eiichi Kikuchi
6.
Polyoxometalate as effective catalyst for the deep desulfurization of diesel oil
Catalysis Today, Volume 149, Issues 1-2, 15 January 2010, Pages 117-121
Rui Wang, Gaofei Zhang, Haixia Zhao
7.
Kinetic study and H2S effect on refractory DBTs desulfurization in a heavy gasoil
Journal of Catalysis, Volume 269, Issue 1, 1 January 2010, Pages 169-178
Leonidas E. Kallinikos, Andreas Jess, Nikos G. Papayannakos
Source: www.ScienceDirect.com
///////
A pressing dinner engagement lent a sense of urgency to the situation. Rather than lose the list, I decided to copy the results for offline browsing later.
Now, I like to be able to sort lists of citations by title or author or date or whatever. I use a combination of Notepad, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel to achieve this goal. Here is my strategy. Maybe you can use it to make your search efforts more effective.
This can be pretty tedious, so be patient.
In ScienceDirect or some other journals database, after a search that produces results you want to save for later, copy the list to your clipboard. Note that the rest of these instructions are based on the results of a ScienceDirect search.
Paste the list into a Notepad window. Notepad strips out all the irrelevant (to us) special characters and formatting. Study the pattern of each record in the list.
In Word …
Find/replace each paragraph marker with a tab marker
Find/replace ANY digit.[space][space][space] with a paragraph marker
Copy the results to your clipboard
Paste the results into an Excel worksheet
The result is a list with article titles in one column, authors in a separate column, journal title in yet another column, etc. So you can now sort by article title, or author title, or journal title, etc.
Why … ?
Because as you search across various databases, each with its own peculiar format, you can produce a private database with a consistent sortable list of the results of searches, no matter which database originates the records.
Obviously you won’t want to share the Excel file because that would not be copyright compliant. But the file can make life easier for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment