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