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On-line periodical index

A friendly search interface for finding the relevant subject

THIS WEEK NetSpeak focuses on periodical indexes that provide citations of articles (appeared in magazines, journals and other periodicals) relevant to one's favourite subject.

Periodicals — magazines, journals and the like — are the major information source for locating the authentic/current content being published on a specific subject. Thousands of general/specialised magazines and hundreds of professional journals are available on-line and off-line. Naturally, it is not easy to keep abreast with all that is being published on one's area by scanning through each of the publications. A periodical index gathers details of magazine/journal articles, stores them on its database and provides the user a friendly search interface for finding the ones relevant to her subject. Different types of indexes are in place. For instance, we have indexes that collect articles from general magazines and subject-specific special databases that index articles only from scholarly journals. Let us have a look at some of the free indexes available on the Net. The free periodical index, IngentaConnect (http://www.ingentaconnect.com), offers a collection of academic and professional research articles from around 28,000 titles. The index allows one to selectively search for content types that include "on-line, fax/ariel delivered, journal and book". Also, the search output can be converted into suitable bibliographic format that can be incorporated into a document easily. The on-line service FindArticles (http://www.findarticles.com/) is a directory of free articles that hosts content from several academic/industry/general publications.

Magportal (http://www.magportal.com), which hosts a database of magazine articles, can be used to find article citations from a wide range of magazines on the web. If you find an interesting article, it can be stored on the service's server (using the `Add to My Articles' feature) for accessing it later. Tens of hundreds of open access journals (journals that allow unrestricted access) are in place. To get the latest content available on such journals, check out the Directory of Open Access Journals at: http://www.doaj. org/home.

Besides the indexes discussed above, there are several others worth a visit:

Oaister (http://oaister.umdl. umich.edu/o/oaister/), a searchable directory of free academic resources.

Questia (http://www.questia. com/Index.jsp), helps you find relevant content published on books and journals.

Free Medical Journals (http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/htm/index.htm): A collection of links to free medical journals.

PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/): A free searchable index of articles published on life sciences journals.

HighBeam Library Research (http://www.highbeam.com/ library/index.asp).

Legal Article finder (http://www.lawmoose.com/ ndex.cfm?Action=MLPI.Show Article Finder).

Law journals (http://library.law.smu.edu/lawrev.htm) and Greasemonkey: A web page customisation tool. Mostly, one visits web sites for viewing content; but many sites force us to view unwanted materials (like advertisements, off-topic discussions, useless/bandwidth hungry graphics/ animations and so on). Of course, one can simply ignore many of them; but no one can belittle the nuisance value of such materials. That is, if one can manoeuvre such sites while viewing them on the browser as per one's whims and fancies, he/she will have a smooth browsing session. The Firefox extension Greasemonkey, which helps instal the user scripts for altering a page's content has been created for this purpose.

Once Greasemonkey is installed on Firefox, it enables the browser to accept scripts meant for altering/enriching the content of specified sites.

For example, if one attaches the script Google Butler (http://diveintomark.org/projects/butler/) to Greasemonkey enabled Firefox, a Google search from it gives an advertisement free Google output. It also adds links to other similar search sites such as Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN and so on.

Greasemonkey seems to have triggered the imagination of many web enthusiasts. Several freely downloadable scripts are available. Check out this link: http://dunck.us/collab/Grease MonkeyUserScripts.

Of course, when you download a script, make sure that it is from a reputed/genuine site.

To keep up with latest developments on Greasemonkey, visit the blog, Greaseblog at: http://greaseblog.blogspot. com/

Google's Mysearch history (https://www.google.com/searchhistory/login) lets you track/manage the Google (http ://www.google.com/) searches you made in the past. Once logged into the service, it will record your searches and the clicks you made from the search results. If you want to disable the service temporarily, you can use `Pause' option.

The service allows you to delete the stored entries.

J.Murali

E-mail the author at: jmurali@gmail.com

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