Category Archives: Tip of the Month

Finding full texts with the MPG SFX linking service

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Surely you have already come across the MPG SFX button .

It appears in licensed databases like Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest etc. By clicking the SFX button, a new browser window will be opened, presenting a menu of services available for a specific reference. The first option will always be the direct full text link if available.

Other ways to find full texts quickly:

Use the Find Fulltext form on our website Use the MPG Citation Linker

The Find Fulltext form and the MPG CitationLinker provide direct access to the SFX service without having to perform a database search.
These are particularly convenient ways to check if any relevant resources (e.g. the full text) are available in respect to a specific item, for which you already have at least some bibliographic information.

EndNote Guides and Video Tutorials

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A good way to get started with EndNote is to visit the Information Retrieval Services’ (IVS-BM) website. The page EndNote short notes will give you a quick overview and by attending an online workshop you could learn more about the system.

Some other guides and video tutorials we would like to recommend you are the following:

If you have any questions or problems regarding EndNote please feel free to contact the library and we will always be happy to help you.

Furthermore two German resources should be mentioned:

Springer’s MyCopy Books

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We already provide access to Springer eBooks. Now you can order your
personal printed copy of an eBook for € 24,95 (including shipping and handling but exclusive of VAT).

Details

  • More than 20,000 eBooks starting with publication date 2005 are included in the MyCopy feature.
  • Each MyCopy book has a colour soft cover, with all internal pages being black and white.
  • MyCopy titles could have up to 832 pages.
  • The MyCopy service does not apply to German titles.

How to order a MyCopy book?

Go to springerlink.com and open up the Springer eBook you are interested in and watch out for the orange MyCopy button. Add the book of your choice to the shopping cart and follow the instructions. Payment is only possible by credit card. You will receive your print copy within 8-10 business days.

 

Author identifiers

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Unique identifiers for scholarly authors can be useful, e.g. for linking to an individual’s research output.

But author identifiers are not widely used, perhaps because they are not so easy to implement. Here are three popular systems that are integrated in e-print archives / bibliographic databases:

  • ArXiv Author ID
  • Researcher ID (Web of Science)
  • Scopus Author ID

The systems aim to identify all publications of an author indexed in the related database and some are linked with profile information about the authors. Therefor name variants or name changes of a particular person has to be included. Another problem to solve is to distinguish different people with the same name. Mostly this works not sufficient because intellectual reviewing and user feedback is needed. While Scopus AuthorID relies on external claims, ResearcherID allows only authors to register for an ID number and to create their own publication list.

Be careful by using the author identifiers for databases searches. Experience has shown that you usually will not get a complete and correct publication list.

Last but not least a hint to the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) must not be missed here. ORCID is a non-profit organization which aims to establish a registry for author identificaton as the de facto standard. “The Open Researcher and Contributor ID would be an alphanumeric string that uniquely identifies an individual scientist in much the same way that a Digital Object Identifier uniquely identifies a paper, book or other scholarly publication.” (Nature, 462, 825 (17 December 2009) doi:10.1038/462825a [only for subscribers])

References:
Fenner, Martin (2011): Author Identifier Overview. In: LIBREAS.Library Ideas, Jg. 7, H. 1 (18). http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/docviews/abstract.php?lang=&id=37867
ArXiv Author ID. http://arxiv.org/help/author_identifiers
Researcher ID. http://www.researcherid.com
Scopus Author ID. http://help.scopus.com/robo/projects/schelp/h_autsrch_intro.htm
ORCID. http://orcid.org/

Searching for patents

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Patents are a very special kind of publication. Looking for a patent you know specific information about can be searched by using the patent number (e.g. EP2366664) or the inventor’s name. To find patents about a specific technology is much more difficult due to legal terminology used in patents.

Patents can be downloaded for free at the patent offices. Another way to get your PDF very quickly is to use a web service (by IVS-CPT), you just need the patent number.

Free patent databases:

  • esp@cenet (European Patent Office)
    The database covers 40 million patents from 71 countries.
  • DEPATISnet (German Patent and Trade Mark Office)
  • USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office)

A number of patent databases, licensed for the Max Planck Society, are available via the web interface STNEasy.
Most bibliographic databases like Web of Science and Scopus do not contain patents. But one database that indexes patents is SciFinder (Chemical Abstracts). It covers patent references from 61 patent authorities around the world.

If you have a request about patent information and your searches in the available databases are not sufficient you should contact the information services of the MPS.