IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v52y2001i14p1242-1254.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The scatter of documents over databases in different subject domains: How many databases are needed?

Author

Listed:
  • William W. Hood
  • Concepción S. Wilson

Abstract

The distribution of bibliographic records in on‐line bibliographic databases is examined using 14 different search topics. These topics were searched using the DIALOG database host, and using as many suitable databases as possible. The presence of duplicate records in the searches was taken into consideration in the analysis, and the problem with lexical ambiguity in at least one search topic is discussed. The study answers questions such as how many databases are needed in a multifile search for particular topics, and what coverage will be achieved using a certain number of databases. The distribution of the percentages of records retrieved over a number of databases for 13 of the 14 search topics roughly fell into three groups: (1) high concentration of records in one database with about 80% coverage in five to eight databases; (2) moderate concentration in one database with about 80% coverage in seven to 10 databases; and (3) low concentration in one database with about 80% coverage in 16 to 19 databases. The study does conform with earlier results, but shows that the number of databases needed for searches with varying complexities of search strategies, is much more topic dependent than previous studies would indicate.

Suggested Citation

  • William W. Hood & Concepción S. Wilson, 2001. "The scatter of documents over databases in different subject domains: How many databases are needed?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(14), pages 1242-1254.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:52:y:2001:i:14:p:1242-1254
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.1191
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.1191
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.1191?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zahed Bigdeli & Morteza Kokabi & Gholam Reza Rajabi & Ali Gazni, 2013. "Patterns of authors’ information scattering: towards a causal explanation of information scattering from a scholarly information-seeking behavior perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(1), pages 103-131, July.
    2. William W. Hood & Concepción S. Wilson, 2003. "Informetric studies using databases: Opportunities and challenges," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 58(3), pages 587-608, November.
    3. Rongying Zhao & Mingkun Wei, 2017. "Academic impact evaluation of Wechat in view of social media perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1777-1791, September.
    4. Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2008. "Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-52.
    5. L. Egghe, 2013. "Theory of the topical coverage of multiple databases," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(1), pages 126-131, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:52:y:2001:i:14:p:1242-1254. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.