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Inspec (The Database for Physics, Electronics and Computing) includes the three Science Abstracts print abstract journal publications: Physics Abstracts, Electrical and Electronics Abstracts, and Computer and Control Abstracts, which began publication in 1898, and two other technology areas: Information Technology for Business, Manufacturing, & Production and Mechanical Engineering. In the following overview you will see what this database contains, the structure of records and how it is vital for your science, engineering and technology research.
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Inspec comprises over ten million records taken from scientific and technical literature published around the globe. Each record contains enough information to enable searchers to pin-point the content that they need for their research. The databases contain bibliographic abstracts and indexing to journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports and other literature in the fields of science and technology. The Institution of Engineering and Technology is one of the world's leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community. The IET has more than 150,000 members in 127 countries and offices in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. The IET provides a global knowledge network to facilitate the exchange of ideas and promote the positive role of science, engineering and technology in the world. Inspec, the IET's bibliographic database of abstracts to journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports and other literature, celebrates its Ruby anniversary this year, although the online archives date back to 1898. Inspec is divided into four databases by date range and File 2,3,4 are updated weekly.
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A bit about the history describes how Inspec got its start. The Institution of Engineering and Technology is one of the world's leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community. The IET has more than 150,000 members in 127 countries and offices in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. The IET provides a global knowledge network to facilitate the exchange of ideas and promote the positive role of science, engineering and technology in the world.
For over 100 years, Inspec has been helping the scientific and research community to find the right information originating with the Science Abstracts journals in 1898. Developed from 'Science Abstracts', first published in January 1898, the INSPEC database was created in 1969. In January, 1973 the INSPEC Thesaurus and Unified Classification Scheme was introduced and in the same year in September INSPEC went online at Lockheed DIALOG via the Tymeshare network in the United States; the whole database (600,000 records) was available for searching in September 1973 only in the U.S. through Lockheed's DIALOG retrieval system. Throughout the 1980s the size of the database grew dramatically from two million records in March 1982 to over 3.5 million records by the end of the decade. Chemical and numerical data indexing was also introduced.
A database upgrade project was completed in 1989 bringing every record (3.2 million of them) up to current day quality standards . The project had required 3.5 man years of software development and more than two years of computer time. When the project was completed in June 1989 and named Inspec2, every single record (3.25 million) had been brought up to current day quality standards. The revised database was named INSPEC2. In November 1990 Inspec2 was loaded on Dialog. By the end of 1997, INSPEC had reached 5.75 million records and was growing at a rate of over 300,000 records per year.
In 2004 the new 1898 – 1968 Inspec Archive file provided a fascinating insight into some of the original material. For the first time, a researchers could sit at their computers and seamlessly search the records of the scientific discoveries shown in both Science Abstracts and the Inspec database for over a hundred years. From 1969 to the present day, the size of the database has grown to 34 gigabytes of data and contains approximately ten million records.
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Inspec is divided into five subfiles providing comprehensive coverage of traditional and cutting-edge publications in the specific fields of physics, electrical and electronic engineering, computing and control, information technology and mechanical, manufacturing and production engineering. Notice the number of records in each subfile. Despite the fact that Section E is relatively new to the database, it already has over 900,000 records.
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Inspec is a key resource for global, quality and comprehensive science and engineering information spanning 110 years. It contains records on Physics (59%), electrical engineering (37%), Computing and control at 27%, Information Technology 1% and Manufacturing, Production & Mechanical Engineering at 8%.
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Inspec draws information from over 4,000 journals, of which 750 major titles are abstracted cover-to-cover. While the main emphasis is journal articles, approximately 70 percent, and 29% papers presented at conferences, including the title, date, location and sponsor of the conference, significant books, book chapters and monographs, technical reports and dissertations and theses are also included. A small number of Great Britain and U.S. patents are included before 1977.
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The coverage in Inspec is quite diverse from communications, computer science, control engineering, information technology to significant coverage of areas such as operations research, material science, engineering mathematics and nuclear engineering. It also covers interdisciplinary topics like environmental science, geophysics, nanotechnology, biomedical technology, oceanography and biophysics.
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Inspec derives its content from nations around the world. Notice the percentages of sources coming from different countries.
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From 1969 to the present day, the size of the database has grown to 34 gigabytes of data. Currently, the Inspec database contains more than 10 million records with the 11 millionth record to be added in the Fall. Nearly 700,000 records are added to the database each year. Inspec now scans over 4,000 journals (and other serial publications) worldwide and 3,000 other publications including conference proceedings and numerous books, reports, articles and dissertations, for inclusion in the database. Approximately 10% of the database's source publications are in languages other than English, but all articles are abstracted and indexed in English. Author-prepared abstracts are used when available. 873,700 original abstracts in the archive File 202. In addition, full-text linking is available in Inspec via DOIs for up to 60 % of current records.
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Inspec is one of the most respected databases in the information business. It contains an extensive thesaurus and coding for different subjects. We will look at the thesaurus and coding in more detail in a minute.
Use Inspec to answer questions for background when conducting scientific research. In the patent area, check the file for prior art, potential licensees for a product, and for infringements against a company's patents. Other ways the file is used is for competitive intelligence, the latest technical developments and to keep up to date via Alerts with new innovations.
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Inspec's stellar reputation is due largely to the quality of the indexing. To ensure knowledgeable, consistent indexing, Inspec's indexers are subject specialists. In addition, the scope of the indexing has grown since the inception of the file to include not only the usual Thesaurus Term and Classification Code indexes, but also the Uncontrolled Index Terms, Treatment codes, Chemical Substance Indexing, Numerical Data Indexing and Astronomical Object Indexing .
The Inspec Thesaurus consists of just over 10,000 controlled terms. You can use the interactive thesaurus features to display lists of terms in a specific subject area, or to see how preferred terms relate to one another in the thesaurus hierarchy.
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Inspec records contain the following search fields which are illustrated in the sample record that follows. Title, abstract and subject terms are in each record as well as bibliographic fields such as author, publication year, to name a few. In addition, the coding and indexing systems in Inspec let the searcher pinpoint records using chemical indexing, class codes, treatment code and more. These value-added fields make searching Inspec extremely specific.
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The following example illustrates the type of information you can find in Inspec. The record shows the title, author and author's affiliation, the source, in this example a conference paper, date of publication, and Conference title. A concise abstract in English follows, along with the value added indexing including the descriptors, identifiers, class codes. If you want other records on a similar topic, this indexing can provide other terms to use in your search.
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As you can see, Inspec (File 2 on Dialog) has a long history with Dialog bringing you comprehensive information in the sciences.
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This completes our overview of Inspec. Thank you for your interest in this premier technical/engineering database and put it on your list to try for free in June.