WISER Science

1. WISER Science Conferences James Shaw and Sue Bird

2. Conferences… Papers… Proceedings …

3. Proceedings

4. Finding conferences

5. Using technology E-MAIL ALERTS

6. Finding conferences:

7. e.g. Chemistry conferences

8. e.g. Psychology conferences

9. Finding proceedings

10. 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

11. 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

17. 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

24. 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

29. 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

32. 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.

34. 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.

36. Subject databases Most subject-specific bibliographic databases include conference papers and proceedings Find those relevant to your subject via OxLIP+ eg: Scopus Biosis Previews SIGLE : System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts) Engineering Index – Compendex INSPEC (for physics)

37. 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

40. 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)

44. 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.

45. 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

46. 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