The Analyze Tool: revealing trends and patterns
Cindi Fitzgerald
Thomson Scientific
You can determine the most prolific authors for a topic, find the institutions that have published most in a specific field, gain insight into publication trends across time for a set of search results, and identify prominent, well-published collaborators for research projects - with the new Analyze Tool, available within ISI Web of KnowledgeSM.
Refining and mining data searches
Now available in Web of Science® and other resources
within ISI Web of Knowledge, the Analyze Tool is a powerful new feature
that serves two important purposes: it refines a search by filtering summary
results and creating isolated subsets containing identified items of interest;
it also mines valuable information from the search results, identifying hidden
trends and patterns within particular areas of research.
How the Analyze Tool helps researchers
For Dr. Karel Hruska, from The Veterinary Research Institute in Brno,
Czech Republic, the Analyze tool within Web of Science has opened doors
to new, productive means of research. This new tool significantly and positively
impacted his research on the relationship between Mycobacterium avium subsp.
paratuberculosis (MAP) and Crohn’s Disease.
Dr. Hruska first compiled important data by using Web of Science to search for articles with the phrase “PARATUBERCULOSIS AND CROHN*”. Then, he used the Analyze Tool to quickly group the results, analyze the published papers, and identify veterinary research trends.
The result was Dr. Hruska’s “analysis of publications” paper in the August 2004 edition of Veterinarni Medicina. In his paper, he determined that the number of papers linking MAP and Crohn’s Disease is increasing, and inferred that the bacterium is increasingly suspected of having involvement in Crohn’s Disease. Because the disease affects cattle and other ruminants, such research impacts all aspects of the dairy and beef markets - from farmers to consumers.
Precise analysis
One of the strengths of the Analyze Tool is that researchers can use
it several times on one search result to further narrow and refine their results.
For example, if a subject search returns a larger than expected number of records,
the results can be analyzed by document type to focus only on original research,
not review articles or meeting abstracts. Then the resulting articles can be
analyzed by subject category to focus on specific subjects areas of greatest
relevance. These results can also be analyzed by publication year to focus results
to the most recent years.
Uses the unique fields in each database
The Analyze Results tool has been implemented in ISI Web of Knowledge
resources by utilizing the database-specific fields. For example, in Web
of Science the following fields are supported: Author, Document Type, Institution
Name, Language, Publication Year, Source Title, and Subject Category. In INSPEC®,
the Analyze Tool supports Author, Classification, Controlled Index, Document
Type, Language, Source Title, and Treatment Type.
In addition to Web of Science and INSPEC, the Analyze Tool also appears in - and takes full advantage of unique fields found within - new versions of PsycINFO®, BIOSIS Previews®, CAB Abstracts®, FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts®), ISI ProceedingsSM, Biological Abstracts® and Zoological Records™, and (just launched) MEDLINE®.
The “Analyze” button appears on all search results summary lists (quick, general, and cited reference searches), as well as on the Times Cited and Related Records® lists accessed from a full record.
Conclusion
By using the Analyze Tool, Dr. Hruska was able to gain valuable insights
and spot trends that uncovered a possible link between Crohn's disease and MAP.