Abstract

The basic characteristics of use and consumption of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information are described, and three newly created information resources are presented: DeepDyve; Science Research from Deep Web Technologies; and WorldCat, from OCLC. Also mentioned are the services Q-Sensei, Base, Scitopia and Lumifi.

Abstract

The evolution of subject portals is described, from their origins in the late 1990s (the era of Yahoo directory, Altavista and other search engines that did not use link analysis) until the present, with a detailed analysis of Intute, the best example of the state of the art. The objective is to determine the role of subject portals in the postmodern era of searching, which is characterized by the intensive use of search engines based on lynk analysis (e.g., Google). The conclusion is that subject portals have a reference and orientation role and are especially focused on the education sector (school and university students).

Abstract

Within the current panorama of science evaluation, the limitations of citation indexes to study the social sciences and humanities have been the subject of wide debate. To resolve this situation, different products have been created for use in national contexts, since they cover certain aspects not contained in more international indices. An example is the In-RECS family, where an indicator such as the impact factor of Eugene Garfield is defined, but its contribution lies in the ability to evaluate research in Spain by obtaining citation indicators. This paper thus highlights the need to create new products for research evaluation in general, but particularly in the social sciences and humanities. The context in which different alternatives arise and are developed to evaluate existing journals is presented, along with Dialnet Metrics, a citation index developed by the Dialnet Foundation in collaboration with the EC3 Group and dozens of Spanish universities. Based on an analysis of the citations of source journals from different subject areas, Dialnet Metrics provides indicators to evaluate the research impact at different levels. This bibliometric product enables contextualized analysis at the micro (researchers), meso (journals), and macro (areas and universities) levels. Finally, the content, data volumes, and structure of this citation index are described quantitatively.