The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE

Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor(a) principal: Miguéis, Ana
Data de Publicação: 2013
Outros Autores: Neves, Bruno, Silva, Ana Luísa, Trindade, Álvaro, Bernardes, José Augusto
Tipo de documento: Artigo
Idioma: por
Título da fonte: InCID
Texto Completo: https://www.revistas.usp.br/incid/article/view/69284
Resumo: Objectives: To analyze the keywords used by authors at the University of Coimbra in papers published in the field of the Pharmaceutical Sciences, comparing them to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) through the use of content analysis. Keywords used in scientific papers show the scope of a subject and its main concepts and are useful in indexing search mechanisms and categorizing texts. Investigation into the importance and characteristics of keywords has focused on various aspects such as efficiency in retrieving information, automatic extraction using different methods and algorithms; the use of keywords by authors and editors; and more recently, their use in metatags and comparison with titles, abstracts and full texts, confirms the interest in the topic. Few papers, however, were found in the literature comparing keywords provided by authors of scientific papers and the descriptors used by indexers, in order to analyze the authors’ contribution in choosing indexing terms.Method: After an exploratory bibliographic review in specialized literature, the sample was composed of 182 scientific papers produced by the community of the School of Pharmacy, University of Coimbra, deposited in Estudo Geral and edited between 1996 and 2012 (up to December 2012) and eventually published in international journals. Access to these papers, stored in open-access repositories, was accomplished by analyzing metadata and the content of full texts using techniques that represent and expose semantic relationships among documents, under which data are related. This paper’s specific objectives were: (i) to identify and measure the number of keywords used in the versions deposited in Estudo Geral and in the versions published by editors; and the number of descriptors assigned by MEDLINE; and (ii) verify the keywords used by the authors that coincide with or relate to the MeSH terms. Some conditions were established prior to data collection, namely to first compare the keywords used in the version published by the journal’s editor first identifying the names of the periodicals to which they belonged and then confirm the number the keywords in both resources. Afterwards, having all the keywords in each of the papers together, we compared the MeSH descriptors assigned to the titles indexed in the MEDLINE database.  The keywords collected from the metadata of the records of papers deposited in the repository and the editor’s final versions were organized for each paper in a grid together with the MEDLINE’s terms. Blank spaces for title, author and year of publication were also added. When quantitatively determining the relationships identified among the key words and MeSH descriptors, we considered equivalence (identical) and associative (related) relationships.Results and discussion: The results confirm that the keywords collected from the metadata of the papers deposited in the Estudo Geral do not correspond to all the keywords present in the published versions, which determined that the analysis of results focused only on the keywords presented in the editors’ versions, comparing them with the MeSH descriptors assigned to the titles indexed in the MEDLINE database. This comparison demonstrated that the number of keywords is significantly lower than the number of terms used by MEDLINE. In regard to the number of keywords per paper, most papers do not present more than five (5) key words, while the number of MEDLINE descriptors is much higher. From a semantic point of view, regarding equivalence and association relationships among the keywords and MEDLINE descriptors, about half of the keywords presented equivalence or associative relationships in similar proportions. Additionally, the relationships established by the keywords mostly present from 1 to 2 equivalent concepts and from 1 to 2 associate concepts.Conclusions: The results show that keywords are an advantageous source of access to scientific papers, highlighting the relevance of keywords chosen by authors to represent information provided by papers indexed in the MEDLINE database. Therefore, the number of equivalent and associative relationships in the 182 papers analyzed is close and even though the percentages are not very high, they enable us to conclude that authors directly or indirectly influence the choice of descriptors. Such a result may encourage the use of keywords to teach indexing per subject and improve efforts toward the automation of the indexing process. The use of Estudo Geral to support this study is intended to call attention to the institutional repository at the University of Coimbra and to the importance of authors as active actors in the process of the representation and retrieval of information through the use of keywords they choose for their papers. Acknowledging the importance of keywords in the representation and retrieval of information is a way to promote self-depositing and to encourage the completion of metadata of the documents deposited; this would contribute to greater visibility, an increased number of citations, and greater impact on the part of scientific production by the institution’s authors and the institution itself.
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spelling The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINEA importância das palavras-chave dos artigos científicos da área das Ciências Farmacêuticas, depositados no Estudo Geral: estudo comparativo com os termos atribuídos na MEDLINERecuperação da informaçãoLinguagens de indexaçãoPalavras-chaveArtigos científicosMedical Subject HeadingsMEDLINEInformation retrievalIndexing languagesKeywordsScientific papersMedical Subject HeadingsMEDLINEObjectives: To analyze the keywords used by authors at the University of Coimbra in papers published in the field of the Pharmaceutical Sciences, comparing them to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) through the use of content analysis. Keywords used in scientific papers show the scope of a subject and its main concepts and are useful in indexing search mechanisms and categorizing texts. Investigation into the importance and characteristics of keywords has focused on various aspects such as efficiency in retrieving information, automatic extraction using different methods and algorithms; the use of keywords by authors and editors; and more recently, their use in metatags and comparison with titles, abstracts and full texts, confirms the interest in the topic. Few papers, however, were found in the literature comparing keywords provided by authors of scientific papers and the descriptors used by indexers, in order to analyze the authors’ contribution in choosing indexing terms.Method: After an exploratory bibliographic review in specialized literature, the sample was composed of 182 scientific papers produced by the community of the School of Pharmacy, University of Coimbra, deposited in Estudo Geral and edited between 1996 and 2012 (up to December 2012) and eventually published in international journals. Access to these papers, stored in open-access repositories, was accomplished by analyzing metadata and the content of full texts using techniques that represent and expose semantic relationships among documents, under which data are related. This paper’s specific objectives were: (i) to identify and measure the number of keywords used in the versions deposited in Estudo Geral and in the versions published by editors; and the number of descriptors assigned by MEDLINE; and (ii) verify the keywords used by the authors that coincide with or relate to the MeSH terms. Some conditions were established prior to data collection, namely to first compare the keywords used in the version published by the journal’s editor first identifying the names of the periodicals to which they belonged and then confirm the number the keywords in both resources. Afterwards, having all the keywords in each of the papers together, we compared the MeSH descriptors assigned to the titles indexed in the MEDLINE database.  The keywords collected from the metadata of the records of papers deposited in the repository and the editor’s final versions were organized for each paper in a grid together with the MEDLINE’s terms. Blank spaces for title, author and year of publication were also added. When quantitatively determining the relationships identified among the key words and MeSH descriptors, we considered equivalence (identical) and associative (related) relationships.Results and discussion: The results confirm that the keywords collected from the metadata of the papers deposited in the Estudo Geral do not correspond to all the keywords present in the published versions, which determined that the analysis of results focused only on the keywords presented in the editors’ versions, comparing them with the MeSH descriptors assigned to the titles indexed in the MEDLINE database. This comparison demonstrated that the number of keywords is significantly lower than the number of terms used by MEDLINE. In regard to the number of keywords per paper, most papers do not present more than five (5) key words, while the number of MEDLINE descriptors is much higher. From a semantic point of view, regarding equivalence and association relationships among the keywords and MEDLINE descriptors, about half of the keywords presented equivalence or associative relationships in similar proportions. Additionally, the relationships established by the keywords mostly present from 1 to 2 equivalent concepts and from 1 to 2 associate concepts.Conclusions: The results show that keywords are an advantageous source of access to scientific papers, highlighting the relevance of keywords chosen by authors to represent information provided by papers indexed in the MEDLINE database. Therefore, the number of equivalent and associative relationships in the 182 papers analyzed is close and even though the percentages are not very high, they enable us to conclude that authors directly or indirectly influence the choice of descriptors. Such a result may encourage the use of keywords to teach indexing per subject and improve efforts toward the automation of the indexing process. The use of Estudo Geral to support this study is intended to call attention to the institutional repository at the University of Coimbra and to the importance of authors as active actors in the process of the representation and retrieval of information through the use of keywords they choose for their papers. Acknowledging the importance of keywords in the representation and retrieval of information is a way to promote self-depositing and to encourage the completion of metadata of the documents deposited; this would contribute to greater visibility, an increased number of citations, and greater impact on the part of scientific production by the institution’s authors and the institution itself.Objetivos: Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar as palavras-chave usadas pelos autores da Universidade de Coimbra, nos artigos publicados na área das Ciências Farmacêuticas, comparando-as com os termos da linguagem documental Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), empregues na análise de conteúdo desses mesmos artigos. No âmbito dos artigos científicos, as palavras-chave expõem a abrangência de um assunto e os seus conceitos principais, que se podem revelar úteis para a indexação em mecanismos de pesquisa ou para a categorização do texto. A investigação sobre a importância e caraterísticas das palavras-chave tem incidido sobre vários aspetos, como o da eficiência na recuperação da informação; o uso para a extração automática a partir de diferentes metodologias e algoritmos; o uso por parte dos autores e editores; mais recentemente, tem sido considerada ainda a sua utilização nos comportamentos de etiquetagem (metatags); e a comparação com os títulos, resumos e textos integrais, o que confirma do interesse que despertam. Mas, na revisão da literatura, foram poucos os trabalhos encontrados que abordassem a comparação das palavras-chave fornecidas pelos autores de artigos científicos e os descritores empregues pelos indexadores, analisando o contributo que podem dar para a escolha dos termos de indexação.Metodologia: Após a revisão bibliográfica exploratória na literatura especializada, delimitou-se a amostra, constituída por 182 artigos científicos publicados em revistas internacionais, da comunidade da Faculdade de Farmácia, depositados no Estudo Geral, editados entre 1996 e 2012, e depositados até final de dezembro de 2012. O acesso a estes artigos científicos, armazenados em repositórios de acesso aberto, faz-se a partir dos metadados e do conteúdo de texto integral, aplicando técnicas que representam e expõem as relações semânticas entre documentos, em cujo âmbito os dados são relacionados. Os objetivos específicos a alcançar com este trabalho visam: (i) identificar e aferir o número de palavras-chave colocadas na versão depositada no Estudo Geral e na versão publicada pela editora; e o número de descritores atribuídos pela MEDLINE; e (ii) verificar as palavras-chave, usadas pelos autores, que coincidem ou se relacionam com os termos do MeSH. No início da recolha da informação definiram-se algumas condições prévias, nomeadamente, fazer uma primeira comparação com as palavras-chave presentes na versão publicada pelo editor da revista, identificando-se, primeiro, os nomes das publicações periódicas a que pertenciam e confirmando-se, de seguida, o número de palavras-chave existentes em ambos os recursos. Num momento posterior e reunidas todas as palavras-chave existentes para cada um dos artigos, compararam-se, então, com os descritores MeSH atribuídos aos títulos indexados na base de dados MEDLINE. As palavras-chave recolhidas a partir dos metadados dos registos dos artigos depositados no repositório e da versão final da editora, foram organizadas, para cada artigo, numa grelha, juntamente com os termos eleitos pela MEDLINE. Para além destes elementos, foram adicionados campos de descrição, como, título, autor e ano de publicação. Na determinação quantitativa das relações identificadas entre as palavras-chave e os descritores MeSH, foram consideradas as relações de equivalência (idênticas), e as relações associativas (relacionadas).Resultados e discussão: Os resultados obtidos confirmam o entendimento de que as palavras-chave recolhidas nos metadados dos artigos depositados no Estudo Geral não correspondem a todas as palavras-chave presentes na versão publicada pela editora da revista, o que determinou que a análise dos resultados incidisse apenas nas palavras-chave da versão da editora, comparando-as com os descritores MeSH atribuídos aos títulos indexados na base de dados MEDLINE. Nesta comparação, verificou-se que o número de palavras-chave é significativamente mais baixo do que os termos empregues pela MEDLINE. No que se refere à frequência do número de palavras-chave por artigo, a maioria dos artigos não apresenta mais que cinco (5) palavras-chave, sendo bem mais aumentada a frequência da atribuição dos descritores da MEDLINE. Do ponto de vista semântico, no que respeita às relações de equivalência e de associação entre as palavras-chave e os descritores da MEDLINE, perto de metade das palavras-chave apresentavam relações de equivalência ou associativas, em proporções semelhantes. Do mesmo modo, a frequência das relações estabelecidas pelas palavras-chave situa-se, maioritariamente, entre 1 a 2 conceitos equivalentes e 1 a 2 conceitos associados por artigo.Conclusões: Face aos resultados apurados, pode-se afirmar que as palavras-chave representam uma fonte de acesso vantajosa aos artigos científicos, o que valoriza a importância das palavras-chave escolhidas pelos autores para a representação da informação dos artigos indexados pela base de dados MEDLINE. Assim, nos 182 artigos analisados, o número de relações equivalentes e associativas é aproximado e, ainda que as percentagens não sejam muito elevadas, permite concluir por uma influência direta ou indireta na escolha dos descritores. Tal resultado pode promover a utilização das palavras-chave no ensino da indexação por assuntos e nos esforços a desenvolver para automatizar o processo de indexação. Ao utilizar o Estudo Geral como suporte a este trabalho, pretende-se chamar a atenção para o repositório institucional da Universidade de Coimbra e para a importância dos autores, enquanto intervenientes ativos no processo de representação e recuperação da informação, através das palavras-chave registadas nos seus artigos. Reconhecer a importância das palavras-chave na representação e recuperação de informação é uma forma de promover o autodepósito e estimular o completo preenchimento dos metadados dos documentos depositados; e contribuir para uma maior visibilidade, probabilidade de aumento de citações, e maior impacto da produção científica dos autores depositantes e da própria instituição.Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto2013-12-20info:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionapplication/pdfhttps://www.revistas.usp.br/incid/article/view/6928410.11606/issn.2178-2075.v4i2p112-125InCID: Revista de Ciência da Informação e Documentação; v. 4 n. 2 (2013): Edição especial - 4ª Confoa; 112-1252178-2075reponame:InCIDinstname:Universidade de São Paulo (USP)instacron:USPporhttps://www.revistas.usp.br/incid/article/view/69284/71742Miguéis, AnaNeves, BrunoSilva, Ana LuísaTrindade, ÁlvaroBernardes, José Augustoinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess2015-04-14T11:18:14ZRevistahttp://revistas.ffclrp.usp.br/incidPUB
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
A importância das palavras-chave dos artigos científicos da área das Ciências Farmacêuticas, depositados no Estudo Geral: estudo comparativo com os termos atribuídos na MEDLINE
title The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
spellingShingle The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
Miguéis, Ana
Recuperação da informação
Linguagens de indexação
Palavras-chave
Artigos científicos
Medical Subject Headings
MEDLINE
Information retrieval
Indexing languages
Keywords
Scientific papers
Medical Subject Headings
MEDLINE
title_short The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
title_full The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
title_fullStr The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
title_full_unstemmed The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
title_sort The importance of keywords in scientific articles in Pharmaceutical Sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: a comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE
author Miguéis, Ana
author_facet Miguéis, Ana
Neves, Bruno
Silva, Ana Luísa
Trindade, Álvaro
Bernardes, José Augusto
author_role author
author2 Neves, Bruno
Silva, Ana Luísa
Trindade, Álvaro
Bernardes, José Augusto
author2_role author
author
author
author
dc.contributor.author.fl_str_mv Miguéis, Ana
Neves, Bruno
Silva, Ana Luísa
Trindade, Álvaro
Bernardes, José Augusto
dc.subject.por.fl_str_mv Recuperação da informação
Linguagens de indexação
Palavras-chave
Artigos científicos
Medical Subject Headings
MEDLINE
Information retrieval
Indexing languages
Keywords
Scientific papers
Medical Subject Headings
MEDLINE
topic Recuperação da informação
Linguagens de indexação
Palavras-chave
Artigos científicos
Medical Subject Headings
MEDLINE
Information retrieval
Indexing languages
Keywords
Scientific papers
Medical Subject Headings
MEDLINE
description Objectives: To analyze the keywords used by authors at the University of Coimbra in papers published in the field of the Pharmaceutical Sciences, comparing them to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) through the use of content analysis. Keywords used in scientific papers show the scope of a subject and its main concepts and are useful in indexing search mechanisms and categorizing texts. Investigation into the importance and characteristics of keywords has focused on various aspects such as efficiency in retrieving information, automatic extraction using different methods and algorithms; the use of keywords by authors and editors; and more recently, their use in metatags and comparison with titles, abstracts and full texts, confirms the interest in the topic. Few papers, however, were found in the literature comparing keywords provided by authors of scientific papers and the descriptors used by indexers, in order to analyze the authors’ contribution in choosing indexing terms.Method: After an exploratory bibliographic review in specialized literature, the sample was composed of 182 scientific papers produced by the community of the School of Pharmacy, University of Coimbra, deposited in Estudo Geral and edited between 1996 and 2012 (up to December 2012) and eventually published in international journals. Access to these papers, stored in open-access repositories, was accomplished by analyzing metadata and the content of full texts using techniques that represent and expose semantic relationships among documents, under which data are related. This paper’s specific objectives were: (i) to identify and measure the number of keywords used in the versions deposited in Estudo Geral and in the versions published by editors; and the number of descriptors assigned by MEDLINE; and (ii) verify the keywords used by the authors that coincide with or relate to the MeSH terms. Some conditions were established prior to data collection, namely to first compare the keywords used in the version published by the journal’s editor first identifying the names of the periodicals to which they belonged and then confirm the number the keywords in both resources. Afterwards, having all the keywords in each of the papers together, we compared the MeSH descriptors assigned to the titles indexed in the MEDLINE database.  The keywords collected from the metadata of the records of papers deposited in the repository and the editor’s final versions were organized for each paper in a grid together with the MEDLINE’s terms. Blank spaces for title, author and year of publication were also added. When quantitatively determining the relationships identified among the key words and MeSH descriptors, we considered equivalence (identical) and associative (related) relationships.Results and discussion: The results confirm that the keywords collected from the metadata of the papers deposited in the Estudo Geral do not correspond to all the keywords present in the published versions, which determined that the analysis of results focused only on the keywords presented in the editors’ versions, comparing them with the MeSH descriptors assigned to the titles indexed in the MEDLINE database. This comparison demonstrated that the number of keywords is significantly lower than the number of terms used by MEDLINE. In regard to the number of keywords per paper, most papers do not present more than five (5) key words, while the number of MEDLINE descriptors is much higher. From a semantic point of view, regarding equivalence and association relationships among the keywords and MEDLINE descriptors, about half of the keywords presented equivalence or associative relationships in similar proportions. Additionally, the relationships established by the keywords mostly present from 1 to 2 equivalent concepts and from 1 to 2 associate concepts.Conclusions: The results show that keywords are an advantageous source of access to scientific papers, highlighting the relevance of keywords chosen by authors to represent information provided by papers indexed in the MEDLINE database. Therefore, the number of equivalent and associative relationships in the 182 papers analyzed is close and even though the percentages are not very high, they enable us to conclude that authors directly or indirectly influence the choice of descriptors. Such a result may encourage the use of keywords to teach indexing per subject and improve efforts toward the automation of the indexing process. The use of Estudo Geral to support this study is intended to call attention to the institutional repository at the University of Coimbra and to the importance of authors as active actors in the process of the representation and retrieval of information through the use of keywords they choose for their papers. Acknowledging the importance of keywords in the representation and retrieval of information is a way to promote self-depositing and to encourage the completion of metadata of the documents deposited; this would contribute to greater visibility, an increased number of citations, and greater impact on the part of scientific production by the institution’s authors and the institution itself.
publishDate 2013
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2013-12-20
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url https://www.revistas.usp.br/incid/article/view/69284
identifier_str_mv 10.11606/issn.2178-2075.v4i2p112-125
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dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv https://www.revistas.usp.br/incid/article/view/69284/71742
dc.rights.driver.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto
publisher.none.fl_str_mv Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv InCID: Revista de Ciência da Informação e Documentação; v. 4 n. 2 (2013): Edição especial - 4ª Confoa; 112-125
2178-2075
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