Building a collection of papers

A collection of papers is a database of journal papers or abstracts that "cover" a research specialty or topic. Generally, such collections are gathered in one of three ways:

• Using a set of topic-specific queries
• Using a small set of seed references, that is, gathering all the papers that cite a specific set of references
• Using all the papers taken from a topic or field-specific set fo journals.

Gathering a collection of papers, is something of an art, and is an iterative process, in which the investigator must check carefully that the gathered set is a comprehensive sample of the specialty of interest's literature.

For testing and evaluating DIVA, a small set of 800 abstracts covering the specialty of mad cow disease is available. Contact Steven Morris, whose email can be found www.conceptsymbols.com.

Use the prion WOS files as practice data for learning DIVA.