New Nature Physics Subscription

We now subscribe to the journal Nature Physics, and our subscription includes full text articles starting from volume 1 issue 1 (2005) to the present. If you are on campus, you can access the journal either by going to the Nature Physics website or via the Libraries website.  If you are off campus, you will need to use the Libraries website to access full-text articles.  If you try to access content from the journal website, the site won't recognize that you're part of the WMU Libraries' subscription and won't allow you access.

Here's a quick demo (about 40 seconds long) of how to access the journal via the Libraries website:

How to access Nature Physics from Libraries website.

New CrossRef DOI standards! What's a DOI?

Electronic Science article with DOI.

On August 2, CrossRef changed its recommendation for how DOIs should be displayed.  Now CrossRef recommends that DOIs include the prefix "http://dx.doi.org/" in addition to the DOI code. Before, it was standard practice to only display the code of a DOI. 

But what is a DOI? It's a "digital object identifier," a
string of characters used to cite and to link to an electronic document.  For various reasons, DOIs are more permanent and reliable than an URL  -- DOIs are guaranteed to never change, unlike regular URLs.

And, how does this DOI code and prefix thing work?  Here's an example.  In the image to the above is from the online journal Science, highlighted is the DOI code -- 10.1126/science.1203659.  That code in specific to that article.  It can use used to cite the article.  But if you were to type only that code into a web browser search box, nothing would happen. Instead, if you add the prefix "http://dx.doi.org/" to the DOI code, the DOI is automatically routed through an existing DOI resolver website, and then takes you to the electronic article.

Try it.  Copy and paste or type the following character string into a web browser search box:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1203659

Now hit the "enter" key or the "search" button in your web browser.  If you are using a WMU computer or a WMU wireless internet connection, it should take you directly to the Science article titled "Independently Evolved Virulence Effectors Converge onto Hubs in a Plant Immune System Network."  If you are not using a WMU computer or WMU WiFi, you should be prompted to log in with your BroncoNet ID and password, and once you do, the article should pop right up. 

But please note: if you are prompted to log in and don't have a BroncoNet ID and password (i.e., are not a WMU student, staff, or faculty member) you will not be able to access this article, even with the full DOI character string, unless you have a personal subscription or access to another institution's subscription to Science.

Why is that?  Some electronic documents are accessible only if you pay the publisher or aggregator that own those documents.  WMU Libraries pays for a subscription to the journal Science, so any student, staff, or faculty  member has access to articles from this journal (within the scope of our subscription), including the article discussed above.

Another question you may have -- what is CrossRef and why do their standards matter?  CrossRef is an organization that has a mandate to be "the citation linking backbone for all scholarly information in electronic form" and are the "official DOI registration agency for scholarly and professional publications."  Over 3500 publishers and societies are members of CrossRef, including at least hundreds of of science-related journals and publishers.  CrossRef in an important component in keeping the DOI system working.

CrossRef and DOIs.  Who knew?

New Web of Knowledge Platform

Detail of new platform.

As of July 17, all Web of Knowledge databases -- including Web of Science, Biosis Preview, and Medline -- will switch to a new default platform.  The new platform will have a gray background, which will be easily distinguished from the soon-to-be old platform's bright green background.

The new platform will include additional search features, such as: (i) left-hand truncation, (ii) elimination of "stop words" list, (iii) "near" searches, and (iv) lemmatization.

Lemmatization option.

What will this mean for people using W of K databases? First, left-handed truncation means you will be able to use a search term like "*phosphate" to search for "monophosphate," "triphosphate," etc.  Second, the database will no long ignore common "stop words,"  like "a," "b," and "of," so you can search for a phrase like "vitamin a" without the database automatically eliminating the "a" from your search.  Third, after  turning on the "lemmatization" feature, a search for "mouse" would also find "mice, and a search for "run" would also include "running" and "ran." Note: this feature is turned on or off by a small, easy-to-over-look drop-down menu at the bottom left of the search screen. Fourth, if you type in a search term like "glia near/5 skeletal" the database will search for articles in which the term "glia" is within five words or the term "skeletal."

Button to preview new platform.

Until July 17, users can preview the new platform by from any W of K database by clicking the "Discover the new Web of Knowledge" button in the upper right corner of the screen.  This button takes you to a web page with a large orange button towards its top, which  when click takes you to the new platform.

After July 17,the current platform (identified by the green background) will become the "secondary" platform, which you will still be able to access at webofknowledgev4.com until the end of the calendar year.

For information about additional features of the new platform, see the Thompson Reuters page describing them.

Biology Digest and GEOBASE Discontinued

On June 30, our access to the article databases Biology Digest and GEOBASE will end. Since neither Biology Digest nor GEOBASE index article citations nor do they include full-text articles, we will not loose access to any journal content.

Currently, the library accesses both databases via FirstSearch, a service provided by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center, Inc.). But since March 2010, OCLC has been phasing out article database services in order to focus on WorldCat, its global library catalog, and other Web-scale library services.

Although Biology Digest and GEOBASE soon will no longer be available, WMU faculty, staff, and students will continue to have other options when searching for biology- and geosciences-related topics. See our biological sciences and geosciences article database guides for database coverage in these subject areas.