Journal Abbreviation Translator
Journal titles in the reference sections of papers are frequently presented in an abbreviated format (e.g. J Am Coll Surg for Journal of the American College of Surgeons (New York NY). Often it is necessary to ascertain the full title of a journal before, for example searching for holdings on a library catalogue which do not generally include title abbreviations. This App will allow users to quickly and simply look up titles for given abbreviations, or vice versa within the SciVerse platform.
Value for Users
Titles for journal abbreviations can be hard to find if the abbreviation is not an obvious one, an abbreviation for a foreign language journal, if the journal is out of print or not available electronically. To find full titles, users must often access a separate service such as Index Medicus (for life sciences titles), consult paper-based lists or ask subject librarians. This can slow users down. Having title abbreviation translations immediately and obviously available would be very helpful.
Application Users
This application would be useful to any user who wished to cross reference the local availability of a journal title with a library catalogue, a very common need. For this purpose they generally require full journal titles and not abbreviations as these are not generally indexed in catalogues. The App would be especially useful for undergraduate students and new researchers who might be unfamiliar with many common journal title abbreviations.
Loading ...
9 Comments
Extremely useful idea – spent over an hour this morning struggling with just this problem for a research student. List included several non-English language titles which took quite some time to resolve.
I agree, definitely useful. Perhaps add the ISSNs (print, electronic, resolving) – since from a technical point of view, finding journals via their ISSNs is easiest.
Both comments above are spot on. Especially when working with scientific publications, the shortened journal titles can be problematic for even the most seasoned users. Having the full title available at the click of a user would be most beneficial.
This would also be quite useful in interlibrary loan, when deciphering what the patron has entered in order to match it with a lending library.
This could be really useful – particularly for older articles with citation styles that omit the article name.
I believe that this would very helpful, especially for those of us in ILL.
It is true that when you are not familiar with the title of a journal, abbreviations may hinder the work, since one has to use alternative tools are not always best to find the full title of the publication such as lists of headings for catalogs mentioned or any more appropriate as an external index may also be the Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory, widely used by librarians to situations at work with the literature that demand this kind of search and thus require additional time with an application as the proposal would be useful to everyone at some point so I agree with your possible implementation as proposed here
Wonderful idea.I struggle with this issue often and would love to see this app win.
This is absolutely a fabulous idea. It would be useful for quick reference to obtain the abbr. journal names.