By Susan Salk
Take a subject like "global warming" and plug it into Google. The result is about 20,000 hits, and no real way of gauging the credibility of all the articles floating on the Web.
This inability to sift through the topsoil to get to the academic paydirt is a predicament that has somewhat stymied investigators in the past. Now it's evaporating with the arrival of the latest search tool to be added to Northeastern's computing environment.
University Libraries has acquired the leading citation-analysis tool Web of Science for faculty, students and staff, providing access to 8,700 of the world's most highly regarded, high-impact journals in all academic fields.
The tool makes it possible for a researcher to determine the validity of published material by gauging how frequently the work is cited in other research, and also allows for a narrower, more focused search.
"This is really great news," said assistant professor of English David Kellogg. "In academic research publishing, the most important thing is what happens to the article after it's published — who else cites it?"
Unlike a general Google search, this tool allows a researcher to more easily track articles based on citations. If there's a particular piece of research already known to the investigator, the Web allows easy access to other journals and publications crediting that same article.
"If you think of the Web literally like a spider web, which has a hub and spokes emanating off it, this image will help you visualize the capabilities of this tool," Kellogg said. "If you start with an article you already know about, you can spin a web out from there."
The ability to check bibliographies of articles is also a helpful tool to gauge the impact of a particular article, he noted.
Jeremy Long, a post-doctoral research fellow with the Marine Science Center in Nahant, said the Web of Science would help him become a more productive researcher.
"It will make writing papers so much easier. I'll be able to be more productive because I'll spend less time researching" the data, Long said. "I hope a lot of people will use this tool, and that their use will encourage the library to go back further than 1993."
The Web will provide access to three citation indexes: the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index. All will be searchable by title, author, subject and date, according to University Libraries.
"This is a really big deal for the university," said Maria Carpenter, advancement and communications officer for the libraries.
She noted that quality measurement methodologies, such as the Hirsch or H-index would be available through the search tool, which was funded through the provost's office.
To view the database, visit www.lib.neu.edu/online_research/articles/web_of_science.