Library Serials Review and BioOne Life Sciences Collection

The Library has undertaken a relatively small review of its journal holdings in 2005. After consultation with relevant groups ten titles were cancelled and two new single subscriptions initiated, taking effect from the beginning of 2006. Of considerable greater significance, however, is the addition of the BioOne electronic collection to the Library's holdings. BioOne consists mainly of learned society journals in the pure and applied life sciences; these are titles that have fallen outside the large publishers' packages. Out of a total of 82 titles 52 will be totally new to Massey while many of the others have been available in print only, including Auk, Journal of Parasitology and Annals of the Entomological Society of America. The BioOne package will be available from the beginning of 2006.

New single titles

Journal of ethology (Albany print)
Nature reviews molecular cell biology (Online)

Cancellations

Acta virologica
Advances in applied microbiology
Belgian journal of botany
Biochemistry & cell biology
Canadian journal of microbiology
Hybridoma & hybridomics
Market outlook : Pigs
Novon – including Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden
Silvae genetica
Vitamins & hormones

BioOne Electronic Collection

New Titles

Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment
American Biology Teacher
American Fern Journal
American Midland Naturalist
American Museum Novitates
American Zoologist (continued by Integrative and Comparative Biology)
Applied Vegetation Science
Bios
BioScience
Brittonia
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History
Castanea
Cell Stress & Chaperones
Coleopterists Bulletin
Economic Botany
Florida Entomologist (Open Access)
Folia Geobotanica (forthcoming)
Herpetologica
Herpetological Monographs
In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology - Animal
In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology - Plant
Integrative and Comparative Biology (continues American Zoologist)
Journal of Arachnology
Journal of Coastal Conservation
Journal of Crustacean Biology
Journal of Field Ornithology
Journal of Herpetology
Journal of Insect Science (Open Access)
Journal of Medical Entomology
Journal of Orthoptera Research
Journal of Paleontology
Journal of the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science
Journal of the New York Entomological Society
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Mammalian Species
Micropaleontology
Mountain Research and Development
Northeastern Naturalist
Northwestern Naturalist
Palaios
Photochemistry and Photobiology
Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
Radiation Research
Rangeland Ecology and Management (forthcoming)
Rangelands
Society of Wetland Scientists Bulletin
Southeastern Naturalist
Southwestern Naturalist
Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science
Ursus
Waterbirds
Wetlands

Titles on BioOne Already Subscribed To

Annals of the Entomological Society of America
Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research
Auk
Avian Diseases
Biology of Reproduction
Botanical Review
Bryologist
Comparative Parasitology
Condor
Copeia
Environmental Entomology
Evolution
Journal of Avian Medicine and Surgery
Journal of Coastal Research
Journal of Economic Entomology
Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology
Journal of Mammalogy
Journal of Parasitology
Journal of the North American Benthological Society
Journal of Vegetation Science
Journal of Wildlife Management
Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine
Paleobiology
Palynology
Weed Science
Weed Technology
Wildlife Society Bulletin
Wilson Bulletin

Massey's Most Cited Science Journals

I recently compiled a list of the journals most heavily cited by Massey-authored articles appearing in Science Citation Index (i.e. the science part of Web of Science) in 2004. Here are the top 20 with the number of times each was cited by Massey researchers -

Nature	137
Proceedings National Academy of Sciences USA	117
Science	111
Journal of Biological Chemistry	100
Journal of Dairy Science	96
Journal of Applied Physiology	90
New Zealand Veterinary Journal	86
Journal of Animal Science	82
Applied and Environmental Microbiology	81
Veterinary Record	79
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association	77
Physical review B	71
Journal of Environmental Quality	67
Equine Veterinary Journal	61
British Journal of Nutrition	60
Poultry Science	59
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry	56
Research in Veterinary Science	56
Journal of the American Chemical Society	54
Journal of Dairy Research	52

Biological Abstracts, FSTA, Medline - New Features for OVID Databases

OVID have launched a new-look interface for their popular suite of databases which includes Biological Abstracts, Food Science & Technology Abstracts, Medline, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and others. As well as including a so-called "Simple Search" option (which looks very much like the Advanced Search with the addition of a box for author name) they have introduced a number of new features -

• Find Similar
• Find Citing Articles
• Find Citation

The Find Similar feature is superficially similar to the Related Records search in Web of Science (WoS). You find a record of high relevance and use it to link to other relevant titles that may not have been turned up by your keyword search, but where WoS uses shared cited references to establish relevance OVID takes subject relevant terms from the title of the originating article and finds other records that contain them. As with WoS the results of Find Similar in OVID can be somewhat random at times, but it certainly worth trying when your initial search has not produced many hits.

The Find Citing Articles feature allows you to locate articles that have cited one of those returned from your keyword search. You need to be aware, however, that the OVID databases do not contain cited reference information. Instead Find Citing Articles uses information from the Journals@OVID database which contains full-text information on some 2,200 journals largely from the medical and life sciences (Massey subscribes to only a few of these through the OVID platform). This means that the Find Citing Articles link will find other articles from these 2,200 journals only.

The Find Citation feature is not the same as Cited Reference searching in Web of Science. Instead it is a way of narrowing your search to locate a specific article by entering details of the journal name, the author and title, the date of the article and the volume number. It is usually easy enough to narrow your search to a specific article by searching for a distinctive phrase from the title but this feature could be useful for finding articles from very truncated references.

There are a number of unique OVID features that have not changed. The $ symbol is still used as the truncation symbol. The Map Term to Subject Heading is still switched on by default in Advanced Search and often produces unimpressive results - you might want to "untick" it or use the Simple Search instead. OVID persist with describing the EndNote/ProCite download format as Reprint/Medlars to the confusion of yet another generation of students. And the link to full-text articles through the Library catalogue is still messy. That said OVID is still a very good platform and the ease with which sets can be created and combined - in both Simple and Advanced Search - is as good as any similar product.

NZ Science Database

Much New Zealand scientific literature is available through the standard international databases like Web of Science, Medline and Biological Abstracts which cover not only research by New Zealanders and on New Zealand topics published in international journals but which index the major New Zealand journals as well. However not all useful research is published in journals - much of it appears in reports, theses, environmental impact statements and the like. This is often known as the "grey literature".

NZ SCIENCE (formerly also known as "SIRIS" and "STIX") is a comprehensive index of New Zealand Science, provided by The Crown Research Institutes, and The Royal Society of New Zealand. Because it is created from submissions from these institutions rather than
from indexing a set range of printed publications NZ Science has an impressively wide range of sources.

NZ Science is part of the Superindex collection and is indexed with a number of newspaper indexes.

This can be interesting but if you are searching for a term that is likely to appear frequently in the press - "kiwifruit" or "earthquake" for example - you should probably switch these sources off.

It is a good idea to extend the date range at the same time - you will notice that NZ Science contains records back to the 1840s!