My Favourite Tipples from a patent and health information specialist
Jinfo Blog

By Jeanette Eldridge

Abstract

My Favourite Tipples are shared by Jeanette Eldridge, a health sciences and patent information specialist. She shares some of her go-to resources in the field of patents, health and medicine.

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As someone who has recent experience working as a librarian in support of systematic review searches, as well as a past role as a patent information specialist, I can see parallels across the two areas in relation to information retrieval techniques. In particular, both require a similar level of depth and rigour in developing and producing comprehensive and reproducible searches, as well as identification of high-quality resources to support these activities.

Here are a few resources that can be of service in both patent searching and information retrieval for systematic reviews.

• WIPO Pearl: WIPO's Multilingual Terminology Portal looks useful for both my areas of interest. It provides access to scientific and technical terms derived from patent documents. The tool allows access to terms in 10 languages through either its Linguistic Search or Concept Map Search. The latter is a visual representation of your search term and a range of synonyms. It allows you to select a path between two terms and export the resulting terminology list to create a keyword search for use in PATENTSCOPE, although the text of the query could easily be adapted to use in other patent and literature databases.
  
  
• Epistemonikos: This database focuses on identifying literature for health-related decision-making. All articles added to the database are translated into the nine included languages by using machine-assisted translation software, and are searchable by any of the languages included. It has become a key resource for inclusion in my list of databases for systematic review searches.
  
  
• MeSH (Medical Subject Headings): Provided by the US National Library of Medicine, this is my starting point for systematic reviews. Although I have used the Browser or Tree View options most frequently to explore the terminology descriptors and relationships, a recently launched feature, MeSH on Demand, caught my eye. For words or phrases (which can be within a block of text from an abstract), it suggests MeSH vocabulary terms, which are machine-generated. The tool also usefully identifies PubMed articles with text similar to that submitted (although I'm not clear on the "similarity" algorithm it uses, as yet!).
  
  
• Clarivate International Patent Classification codes: In some systems, a concordance between indexing systems can be consulted. This is a link to a Clarivate document that provides an approximate concordance between Derwent World Patent Index EPI (Electrical Patents Index) manual codes and IPC codes. In patent information, retrieval of relevant patent abstracts or full-text documents can be extended by both the use of multilingual tools and, importantly, the indexing applied by patent offices in categorising examined patent applications, as well as using value-added indexing assigned in commercial patent information resources.
  
  
• USPTO: This has a search option to explore the concordance between US patent classification (USPC) terms and the IPC, as well as between the USPC and the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).

For fun:

• I've been a long-time subscriber to the "Which?" magazine produced by the Consumers' Association, a UK-registered charity. I'm a fan of their online resources for comparing and contrasting similar products on a variety of criteria before I buy, as well as their highlighting of important issues or campaigns, such as asking for more transparency about how personal and activity data is collected, used and shared.

A recent Jinfo article I found particularly interesting:

• As I am returning to patent information after some years in different information professional roles, I appreciated the recent Jinfo report, "Market landscape - patent products", and its links to other recent individual product reports. It has given me an insight into some new players in the area, as well as reminding me of some of the leaders already on the market!

Contribute your "My Favourite Tipples"

Would you like to share your "My Favourite Tipples" with the Jinfo audience? For contributor guidelines email catherine.dhanjal@jinfo.com or visit the Publish with Jinfo page.

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