Early in my days as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Library, a program officer asked me for help filling out a panel of reviewers. On a short deadline, he had worked for 2 days and only found two possible reviewers. In desperation, he wondered if there was any assistance I could give. The topic was “vibrational spectroscopy.” In 2 hours, I had a list of several hundred possible reviewers, with information about each reviewer to help him choose those most appropriate. He was astounded that I could do this so quickly and easily, and I was surprised that he could not.
As a result, I developed a workshop that all new program officers at NSF would attend on how to use standard library resources to quickly and easily find and evaluate possible peer reviewers, even if the subject area is unfamiliar. These program officers come to NSF as highly sophisticated users of standard databases, having used them throughout their careers as scientists. But what they have not done is viewed these tools through this particular lens.
Web of Science and Scopus both offer a wealth of incredible features for this task. These databases are so powerful, flexible, and elegant that they have abilities you never even dreamed were available. Let me give you a quick walk through some of the special features that can make this task simple and effective for you and your patrons.
Source: Online
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 and is filed under Scholarly Publishing, Search News.
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