Wednesday, June 19, 2013

BIG DATA: Exploring IEEE Xplore

“However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him.” -- Nicholas Boileau (French poet and literary critic, 1636-1711)

The IEEE Xplore (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore) database is not the big data everybody is talking about these days, but it's still big, and there is lots of useful data.

Full text articles are available only to subscribers.  But nonsubscribers can register for guest accounts, which enables them to see abstracts, create email alerts, and much more.

One question you may ask … “I get hits on IEEE/Xplore when I search Google Scholar®, along with hits from all the other sources out on the Web.  Why bother with just this one database?”

Excellent question.  I’m glad you asked.  Here is a list of the things you can do as a registered guest that you can’t do by searching Google Scholar® …

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Why use IEEE Xplore?
1-After searching, sort by "Most cited" to identify core documents and experts
2-For any given article, click "Metrics" to see how many times it has been cited according to three systems ... Crossref, Scopus, and Web of Science
3-For any given article, click "Cited By" to identify other experts in the field
4-In the side bar (IEEE term is "Facet List") click "Affiliation" to see a list of institutions of interest
5-Export results into .csv (spreadsheet) format
6-Create alerts
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Future posts will go into detail on each of these features.

And remember, as noted above, if your organization subscribes, you also will have access to the full text of the documents you identify in your searches.  Ask your organization's librarian for details.

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