Get to Know Our Citation-based Search

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We know you appreciate searching based on citations, so let us provide you with some handy search tips to make use of INSPIRE’s functionality:

With the search term “topcite” you can search by citation count, like papers with a given number of citations or within a range such as “100->500” (just be careful not to include any blank spaces) or you can use another popular  range, “100+”, instead. For example, you can search for publications authored by Bando with 100 to 500 citations using “find a bando and topcite 100->500”  

Using “find c” you can search on the number of citations from papers in INSPIRE to an article, even if the article itself is not part of INSPIRE. To search for all the papers citing a certain Physics Review Letters publication you would use “find c Phys.Rev.Lett.,28,1421”.

The search term “refersto” can be very helpful if you are looking for articles that refer to other sets of articles. If you want papers that reference articles of a particular journal (e.g. Phys.Rev.Lett) you can type “find refersto j Phys.Rev.Lett.”. The same applies to other sets, for example, to search all the articles that reference the ATLAS Collaboration you could use “find refersto cn ATLAS“.

Another interesting term is “citedby”. With citedby, you can find all the publications that were cited by a certain set of articles or by specific authors, e.g. by searching “find citedby a maldacena”, you can find all the publications that Maldacena has cited.

An additional search syntax: How to search with INVENIO

At this point we should mention that INSPIRE also supports an alternative search syntax that you could find more convenient depending on your preferences. You can find all of the examples that were used previously in both search  in the table below.

SPIRES SYNTAX EXAMPLES INVENIO SYNTAX EXAMPLES
topcite find a bando and topcite 100->500 author:bando and cited:100->500
find c find c Phys.Rev.Lett.,28,1421 reference:Phys.Rev.Lett.,28,1421
refersto find refersto j Phys.Rev.Let refersto: journal: Phys.Rev.Lett
citedby find citedby a maldacena citedby: author: maldacena

 

And what about “self-cited”?

In our previous blog post, we explained how to use the self-cite search syntax. It is time to clarify what the self-cited really is so that you can fully understand the potential of self-cited.

Many times authors of scientific papers use their previous publications as a basis for expanding on their research. When an author cites his/her own past publications in a paper, these publications are referred to as “self-cited” in INSPIRE.

Keep in mind that self-citations are gathered only from the papers in our database that have reference lists and they apply to all the (co-)authors involved, citing and cited.

For example, there is this article  written by a 4 researchers and some of the writers decided to make a reference to it in their future publications. So this publication is included in the citations section as self-cited. Keep in mind that if a paper has more than one authors, then self citation is any citing paper written by any of these authors. If you want to remove self-cited from your INSPIRE queries, check our previous post on how you can combine the syntax to obtain the exact results you are looking for.

Let us know what you think in the comments below or send us an e-mail to feedback@inspirehep.net  with your comments and suggestions!

For more helpful tips and information about our features follow INSPIRE’s blog and tweets.

New self-cite search syntax

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Citation metrics are one of the most used features on INSPIRE. We are always looking for ways to enhance the options to search through citations and references.
We introduced three new search terms you can use to refine your search results and exclude self citations:

Note that ‘M.E.Peskin.1’ is an authorID.

If you have more requests for search syntax that might make your life easier, take a look at our search guide and tips and don’t hesitate to contact us at feedback@inspirehep.net

For more helpful tips and information about our features follow INSPIRE’s blog and tweets.

Topcites 2014 edition

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In the world of topcited papers, 2014 looked a lot like 2013 and not just because the Review of Particle Physics is once again at the top. The effects of 2012’s discovery of the Higgs boson continued to be strongly felt and many of the related papers from the 2013 topcite list appeared again in more or less the same position. Along with the discovery papers themselves [1,2], the original theory papers [34,35] and the detector description papers [17,19], a host of papers relevant to event simulation at the LHC [4,7,9,12,14,20,22,28,31] have featured prominently; interestingly, the PYTHIA paper [4] is now the first paper from the 2000s in the All Time Topcite list. The AdS/CFT papers [5,10,16] and Randall-Sundrum [26] continue their 15+ year run on the Topcite list. Planck [3], WMAP [11,24] and the 1998 supernova cosmology papers [13,15] again represent observational cosmology on the list.

So what was new this year? The March announcement [6] by BICEP2 of the results of a search for inflationary gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background had an immediate impact and the paper had 100 citations within two weeks and 500 by July. This got people thinking about inflation and brought back a number of inflation papers from the 1980s to the topcite list [23,29,36,37] in addition to Guth’s perennial paper [21], which climbed twelve places in the rankings, and the Planck inflation paper [8], which climbed twenty one.

The remaining inductees were the October 2013 LUX constraints on dark matter paper [18] (that joined the similar XENON100 paper [27]) and the March 2013 Planck overview paper [38].

Rounding out the list were the electron antineutrino disappearance papers [30,33], Hawking’s black hole radiation paper [25], the dark energy review of Copeland et al. [32] and Minkowski’s sleeping beauty [39].

 

 

-Heath O’Connell

Rawref searching

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Ever wanted to just cut and paste a reference from a paper in INSPIRE and find the corresponding paper? We have worked hard to try to make this possible. You have two ways to do it:

rawref1Note that you must put your search in quotations when using rawref. However, you can omit the year when searching this way, e.g. find rawref “JHEP 1202 068”. Correct spacing is also not necessary, thus rawref:”Phys. Rev. D 90 064027″ and rawref:”Phys.Rev. D90 064027″ will yield the same result.

Any journal name variant listed in INSPIRE will work with rawref. You can find these variants by searching for a journal name in the Journal section of INSPIRE. Click the name for the detailed record, and then click the link for “Show name variants”.

namevariantsJournal record for Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research

Rawref:”Nucl.Instrum.Meth. A584 (2008) 75″, rawref:”Nucl. Inst. and Meth. Phys. Res. A584 (2008) 75″, and rawref:”NIM A584 (2008) 75″ are all valid searches.

If you just paste a reference in the search bar without ‘find rawref’, INSPIRE-HEP will try to guess what paper you are looking for.

journalhintJHEP 1202 (2012) 068

 Please contact us at feedback@inspirehep.net if you have any comments or suggestions for improving INSPIRE.

Updating DOIs in arXiv

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Usually we add DOIs and update INSPIRE to reflect the fact that articles are published within a few weeks of publication. This information is taken from feeds INSPIRE receives from publishers. We try to find the corresponding preprint in a semi-automatic way and add the publication information. Sometimes this process is delayed or fails. If after waiting patiently for updates you do believe there is a failure in the process, please let us know, as other articles might be affected as well.

But did you know that the quickest way to add a DOI and journal publication information to preprints in INSPIRE is to update them in arXiv? While this may seem like an indirect method, authors have direct control over their papers on arXiv (via paper password) and can easily augment information there in an authenticated way. INSPIRE automatically receives these updates within just a day or two. This can be done at any time, and adding the publication information on arXiv does not result in a new version either in arXiv or in INSPIRE.

Once you’ve logged in at arXiv, click the Journal ref symbol beside the papers you’d like to update.

hocdoi1

This will take you to a page where you can enter the relevant information.

tmp_axiv_2

More information on how to do this can be found at the arXiv help page on the topic.

Doing this on arXiv has several advantages. Information updated on arXiv will flow to other services as well, whereas information added to INSPIRE currently doesn’t propagate yet. While arXiv can process such requests automatically due to the login, it requires manual intervention at INSPIRE and hence it may take more time for the updates to appear. If you have any comments or questions on this topic, drop us a line at feedback@inspirehep.net.

User-centered design to improve INSPIRE

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As mentioned before, we have started re-designing INSPIRE and your feedback is proving to be precious! Our colleague Robin Colignon will share his thoughts about the importance of usability and how we are using it to improve INSPIRE.

Why is usability important?

If a website is too hard to understand, difficult to use, or the information is not arranged in a logical manner, most of the users feel frustrated and eventually leave and never come back.

Usability concepts cover both the ease of use and learnability of any human-made object, such as a website. Considering usability allows developers and designers to create easy-to-understand interfaces, provide well-organized information, and increase the users’ effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.

If you have questions concerning usability, the following website will provide you further information: http://www.usability.gov.

INSPIRE’s new home page

Information architecture tackles the structural design of shared information environments to support findability and usability. Thus, the new information achitecture for INSPIRE focuses on the core functionalities and the content provided.

But before re-designing it we have to understand which ones are the most valuable features for our users; the best way to obtain such information is to ask the community directly.

We ran card sorting tests with our volunteer users, where they could organize the current content of INSPIRE as they thought they should be categorized, highlighted, or excluded. Every tester could group the cards according to their own preferences and provide new names and descriptions.

 

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These insights enlightened us and helped us create a first design interface that takes your needs and requests into account.

Have a look at our first proposal. The mock-up shows how the home page could look like:

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This is just a small teaser! We will be running lots of user tests during our re-design. If you are interested, come back in a few weeks to discover more or join us as a tester. We will be happy to share this experience with you! Contact us at
usability-testing@inspirehep.net.

Robin Colignon is an expert in UX/UI working on the re-design of INSPIRE. He graduated in Information System and Services Science and in Computer Science from the Université de Genève. His interests include user-centered design and interfaces.

Filtering results by country

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Have you ever wanted to search by country of author affiliation in INSPIRE? It can be very helpful to filter laboratories or researchers based in a particular location or to extract your own statistics. We have reintroduced the country search capability, following the SPIRES’ syntax, to enable such queries when an author affiliation is present.

Check these examples; the syntax works using both the country name and the Internet country code:

You can, of course, use it as part of more advanced queries. For example, to find how many experimental papers with Chinese contribution were published in 2013:

And finally, as we know you love statistics as much as we do, these are the most common countries in INSPIRE (extracted the 7th Aug 2014):
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A new look for our author pages

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After months of hard work on improving our author profile pages, we are happy to present the new design and features and to answer the most important questions you might have about the new pages.

How do I get to the author pages?

Author profiles are interlaced with all the content in INSPIRE, thus you can find them in different ways:

  • Using the HepNames collection and click the author profile link. However, if after clicking Author Profile you land on the Person Search page instead, you will be presented with a choice of authors.  Pick the best match and click “Publication List”.
  • Using the HEP collection, click on any author’s name.
  • If you are already browsing an author profile page, you can find others by using the search bar in the top right corner.

What’s new?

As a regular user, the first thing you will notice is that the information appears now re-organized. It is displayed in three main columns: personal information, publications and output, and stats. We think this reflects the feedback we got from you in our usability testing sessions in the best possible way. The layout will adjust to your screen size automatically so you might not always see the three column structure.

In the publications box, you will find more material integrated: data sets and other publications, even outside INSPIRE’s scope! In this way your profile is more complete and reflects your research activities better.

We also changed the layout of the “Personal details” box. Your field, experiments, and institutions are now arranged in an easy-to-read and easy-to-update style.

So… have a look!

new author page

Where does the information on my profile page come from?

The profile is built by an algorithm that extracts information from the papers assigned to the profile. However, all personal information is curated by our staff. We want to keep it accurate! You can always help us by providing more information about yourself or your publications.

What if my personal information box is empty?

If your author profile is not yet linked to a record in our person database, the personal information box will look like this.

001

You can either select the best match or, if none of the suggested records fit or you don’t get a suggestion at all, you can create a new record.

If, by mistake, your author profile is connected to the wrong person record, send an email to authors@inspirehep.net and our staff will fix it manually for you.

How can I edit my profile?

The “Manage profile” page allows you to merge profiles, connect to ORCID, manage your personal information, and contact us for help if you should get stuck and our help pages don’t get you any further.

Click “Manage Profile” below your name on the author page. After logging in with your arXiv account you can get it linked with your author profile in INSPIRE (you just have to do it once, of course). If you don’t have an arXiv account, you can also proceed as a guest. In that case, an INSPIRE staff member will have to approve your input, which may take longer to appear.

But what about…?

For every question not yet answered, feel free to ask it as a comment here or share it with us at feedback@inspirehep.net. We’re always interested in suggestions on how to improve INSPIRE. If you are interested in being a tester to give us feedback in usability sessions, we would welcome your participation.

INSPIRE @OR2014

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Those of you following us on Twitter have already seen that the INSPIRE team contributed to this year’s Open Repository conference in Helsinki.

We were there to share our experience and features with other state of the art services. Also, we took advantage of the event to discover other services that could provide further content to INSPIRE, so we can provide you with a complete picture of your research.

2014-06-12

This year, a big part of the presentations focused on data. DOIs for citable data are already a reality in many disciplines. But, as it turned out, it looks like INSPIRE is one of the very few around that can actually track citations to data. Have a look at one example of data reuse and citation tracking in INSPIRE.

ORCID iDs were another important topic during the conference. Many systems, from data repositories to publishers, are integrating them as author identifiers. They enable you to connect your research globally, import and export your publication list, independently of the backend used by each platform.

On INSPIRE, you can link your ORCID with your author profile. This will help us to discover your publications in other fields (e.g. condensed matter or mathematics) and enrich your profile. During the conference, we also presented a preview of our new author pages. They will be deployed next week, stay tuned!
Finally, during the dedicated Invenio session (the software INSPIRE is built on), we presented a first sneak peek of the INSPIRE Labs website. With a brand new modern design, we will use it to test many of the new features coming to INSPIRE. Let us know at usability-testing@inspirehep.net if you want to become an INSPIRE tester and start experimenting with them very soon!

INSPIRE highlights: one-year checkpoint with our Advisory Board

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The INSPIRE Advisory Board meets once a year to hear about progress in the services and feedback from the user community. We recently took stock of progress in our service, its hardware, software, and the new areas we are starting to focus on.

Our Advisory Board counts seven experimental and theoretical physicists from the participating laboratories and the community at large, plus the manager of our sister service NASA Astrophysics Data System. The 2014 meeting took place at Fermilab in May. INSPIRE staff from the five participating laboratories (CERN, DESY, IHEP, Fermilab and SLAC) presented to the Advisory Board an extensive overview of the team’s work during the previous year, along with current challenges and future directions. Among the topics were the organization of our service, the user feedback, the content selection and processing.

The meeting of the INSPIRE Advisory Board is a great opportunity for the INSPIRE team to reflect on the last year’s achievement. We are proud to share some highlights with our entire user community:

  • We made extensive operational improvements to the INSPIRE infrastructure, including new hardware and architecture, major refactoring of the INSPIRE code base, and significant process improvements. While invisible to users, these improvements ensure continuing speed and reliability and allow us to prepare for future development.
  • We mused about future directions for the design of INSPIRE and how to bring together our classic search experience with interaction design and modern web design standards, especially for new services such as author profiles and a more efficient submission of corrections and feedback.
  • We realized how much effort we were able to devote to support open research data. In addition to helping make the ATLAS Higgs likelihood available in a citable way, we also started to link papers to code from GitHub, and integrated third-party data repositories.
  • We reviewed all new content we have been adding to INSPIRE: daily upload of the LHC experimental notes CMS-PAS, ATLAS-CONF, and LHCb-CONF, increased coverage of nuclear physics, and the upload of the PDFs of approximately 10,000 relevant articles from Proceedings of Science, which are now searcheable.
  • We invested additional resources to meet expectations of a timely update of references, authors, and other information of articles we receive from arXiv and beyond. Parts of this process are still manual. During the last year we cleared over 10,000 existing tasks. Our ongoing backlog is now around 1,500 tasks, the lowest in several years. It usually takes us between a day and less than a month to process these tasks.
  • The meeting was an ideal opportunity to welcome IHEP as a new member of the INSPIRE collaboration.

The meeting was an enjoyable, lively exchange, providing lots of food for thought as INSPIRE moves forward.

During the course of our conversations, John Beacom, Advisory Board member, was “impressed with the significant efficiency gains for internal processes and author disambiguation, and strongly encourages further co-operation with ADS to improve coverage of astrophysics and cosmology.”

Our recent efforts in handling experimental data within INSPIRE are being appreciated by the Advisory Board. Kyle Cranmer remarked that “data and code are becoming increasingly important as research products, treating them as first class citizens within INSPIRE is an exciting new direction for the field.” Michelangelo Mangano was “impressed by the rapid response of the INSPIRE team to all suggestions from the community and the Advisory Board, and look[s] forward to continued progress in streamlining the access to the experimental data, also in cooperation with the HEPdata project.”

The INSPIRE Advisory Board is an invaluable source of insight and a trusted representative of the community we serve. Its input, together with the hundreds of e-mails and suggestions we receive from our community make sure that INSPIRE stays true to its course: to be an indispensable service for the High Energy Physics community worldwide.