NETSPEAK
Remaining update with academic content
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Authormapper is a free service that searches journals
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Google book Search is a valuable service from which one can read old and new books.
Scores of scholarly materials are being published across the globe regularly. Tracking the new arrivals in his/her subject domain poses a formidable challenge to an academician. A few on-line services meant for this academic content tracking process is discussed in this week's NetSpeak.
Regular readers of this column need little introduction to the RSS-based newsfeed technology that enables content authors/publishers easily/ economically share the summary and other details regarding the published material.
As discussed in an earlier issue, apart from being used as a tool to provide the latest content available on dynamic web sites, the RSS technology is being tried out to distribute other types of content as well (http://www.thehindu.com/ thehindu/biz/2004/06/28/ stories/2004062800461700. htm)- like weather forecasts, new job listings, stock prices and new book announcements.
Professional journals play a significant role in an academician's life. Hundreds of journals could be available on the subject of a researcher's choice. But he may not necessarily be aware of all of them. Even if there is enough awareness, one may not be able to track each of them in terms of content and quality.
However, if by some means the table of contents of each of the journals pertaining to his/her subject could be obtained by the researcher, this content overload may be managed to some extent. The RSS technology has the potential in this domain too.
Many publishers distribute the table of contents (TOC) of their new editions in RSS format.
Now, we face another issue. Several journals are being published on a variety of subjects and therefore locating the TOC-RSS feeds relevant to one's research topic is cumbersome. To tame this expanding TOC feed database, TOC feed directory services are in place. The `current issues' page of Citeulike (http://www.citeulike. org/journals ) is a good place to find TOC feeds from several journals.
TicTOCs (http://www.tictocs. ac.uk/), the on-line journal TOC feed indexing service, is another valuable resource in this genre. This free service collects the table of content feeds from journal publishers across the globe and lets the user obtain all the feeds relevant to his/her topic.
In response to a search query, the service presents a set of feeds from which the user can select his/her preferred ones. Once the feeds are selected thus, the service combines all the feeds into an OPML file (OPML is a file format used to create a list of RSS feeds). You can subscribe to all the feeds contained in this file with your newsfeed reader using its import facility and closely monitor the latest articles being published.
Yet another product worth a mention in this regard is Authormapper, the free service that searches journals and plots authors/subjects/ institutions on a world map. To generate the map it takes the data from Springer Journal collection (http:// www.authormapper.com/ about.aspx).
NewsNow
We welcome any tool that has the potential to mitigate the ongoing information explosion. NewsNow (http:// www.newsnow.co.uk/h/), a site that constantly updates news on a variety of subjects is a valuable tool. The service culls news from a wide array of sources and displays them under different subject categories.
The news pages are automatically updated every five minutes. So, if you are a technology enthusiast, select that category from the topic menu and keep that page on a tab in your browser. Once this is done, to obtain the latest happenings in your domain, you just need to go through that page.
PDF search engine
Special search engines that index documents in the PDF format are not new to Net- Speak readers. We have mentioned a few such services (like PDF Database) in the past.
The latest PDF search service stumbled on by this author is PDF Geni (http://www.pdfgeni.com/) that indexes e-books and other documents in the PDF format. DocJax (http://docjax.com/home/ index.shtml) is another special search engine from which you can find/download different types of documents. In addition to PDF documents, the service indexes documents in formats such as DOC and PPT as well.
Book downloader
Google Book Search (http://books.google.com/) is a valuable service from which one can read old and new books. If you find it difficult to read the books on-line from this service, here is a better means to read them off-line. The free software Google Book Downloader (http:// www.codeplex.com/Google- BookDownloader) lets you download any book (restricted to the pages available for free download) from Google Books as a PDF document - you just need to know the ID of the book concerned.
Financial crisis timeline
The current financial crisis is spreading its wings in almost all segments of our life, though governments across the world are taking varied measures to contain its impact. On this count, NetSpeak came across a web site that focusses on this crisis. The site `Financial crisis timeline' (http://timeline. stlouisfed.org/) offers a timeline of the various events/policy actions adopted by the U.S. government. The timeline is a continuous information stream that gets updated often.
The site publishes a timeline RSS feed too. In addition, the site presents lots of articles and other resources pertaining to this subject as well.
J. MURALI
He can be contacted at: jmurali@gmail.com
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