Conferences
James Shaw and Sue Bird
WISER Science
Conferences…
Papers…
Proceedings …
Proceedings
Finding conferences
Using technology
E-MAIL ALERTS
Finding conferences:
e.g. Chemistry conferences
e.g. Psychology conferences
Finding proceedings
Locating conference papers
If you are given a reference to a conference paper that doesn’t mean it was necessarily published!
• Recent papers might be on web – try searching on the paper title, author, organisation name or the conference name
• Sometimes you can quite easily track down the author and they will send you a copy
Searching library holdings in Oxford University• When searching OLIS for a conference paper you need to
search for the proceedings of the conference rather than the specific paper
• Conferences are treated as corporate authors• Published proceedings may have different title to the
original • Publisher may be different from conference organiser• SOLO search box uses keywords & searches subject
headings as well as titles
Conferences at the British Library
• The British Library catalogue can be searched at catalogue.bl.uk/ and catalogue subset search allows you to limit to conference proceedings
• ZETOC service allows searches for individual papers
Google & Google Scholar
• Use Google for locating announcements of forthcoming conferences
• No controlled vocabulary, so search for ‘conference’ and also synonyms – meeting, symposium, congress etc
• Prefer Google Scholar for conference papers
Conference indexes
• PapersFirst & ProceedingsFirst
available through OCLC FirstSearch
• ISTP – Index of Science and Technology Proceedings
available through Web of Knowledge
• Conference Papers Index
available through CSA - Illumina
ISI Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings
• Now known as Conference Proceedings Citation Index & searchable from within Web of Science
• ISTP covers only publications in which the proceedings are published for the first time, and only those which contain complete papers, not just abstracts.
• Published proceedings may be included from a number of sources; books or series produced by publishers or societies, reports, sets of preprints (when preprints are the only publications from a conference) or journals.
Conference Papers Index (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)
• Subject emphasis since 1995 has been in the life sciences, environmental sciences and the aquatic sciences, while older material also covers physics, engineering and materials science.
• Information is derived from final programs, abstracts
booklets and published proceedings, as well as from questionnaire responses.
Subject databasesMost subject-specific bibliographic databases
include conference papers and proceedings
Find those relevant to your subject via OxLIP+
eg: ScopusBiosis Previews
SIGLE : System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe
SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts) Engineering Index – Compendex INSPEC (for physics)
Repositories
• Institutional and subject-based repositories being developed
Oxford: Oxford Research Archive http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/ora
Search them via:
OAIster http://www.oaister.org
Google / Google Scholar
SCIRUS http://www.scirus.com
Newspapers
• Often report on major conferences, usually while being held
• Frequently do not give any indication of where proceedings / website can be found
• Search newspapers through LexisNexis Nexis UK (Global Business and News Service)
Quoting• Be consistent and follow a standard system, e..g. Harvard,
when referring to papers or proceedings.• Give as much detail as possible – remember how much trouble
you had finding it! An accurate reference will help others.• Generally include:• Author(s) of paper - surname and initials Year of publication, 'Title
of paper - in single quotation marks' [in] Editor (if applicable), Title of published proceeding which may include place held and date(s) - italicised, Publisher, Place of publication, Page numbers.
To summarise• Identify key organisations and personal contacts• Get technology to do the work for you• Many papers are available online • Search library catalogues for print holdings• Use Inter-library loan service for printed items not held locally• There are specific databases for conference proceedings • Many general or subject indexing databases allow you to search for
conference proceedings• Your subject librarian is always ready to help - see
http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians
WISER Archive
• This and most of the other presentations in the WISER programme are available on the OULS site:
http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/information_skills
http://sers018.sers.ox.ac.uk/services/training/wiser