1. Recycling in the Digital Age:
Creating Analytics tools from a discovery database
Tim Aitken,
Senior Product Manager,
Inspec

2. 18m The Inspec Abstracting & Indexing Database
Electrical & electronic engineering
Computing & control engineering
Production, manufacturing & mech. engineering
Physics
records (Oct 2018)
870,000 records added in 2017
Optional Archive adds another 873,699
Over 4,500 journals, and 3,000 other publications from 750 publishers
Over 10% open access titles
The Inspec database has been the definitive engineering and physics research database for almost 50 years.
Over that time our expert indexers have indexed over 18 million articles from journals across the world. There are currently more than 4,500 journals indexed in Inspec.
10 million +
7 million
5.5 million
2.2 million
Developed to make scientific article discovery easier through doc gathering, curation & consistent content indexing
Main customer base: Universities & Engineering corporates
Changing market conditions, user behaviour and available technologies has led to decline in usage since 2008, and consequently revenue declining year on year
Investigated semantic enrichment and new applications as a means to assuage/reverse this

3. Added Value Fields by Indexer
The Inspec Indexing process
Title
Abstract
Other Bibliographic Information
(Author, Source, etc.)
From Original Source
Bibliographic
Record
Uncontrolled Index
Controlled Index
The articles are indexed in 3 ways:
* The information from the article e.g. title, author, journal, publication date etc.
* Subject terms (keywords) that identify what topics of research an article relates to.
* Special indexes including Inspec classification codes, which fit the article into a hierarchy within Inspec. (The top level is Physics, Electrical and electronic engineering, Computing and control engineering and Production and mechanical engineering) There are up to 5 levels in Inspec.
Subject
Terms
Added Value Fields by Indexer
Classification Codes
Astronomical Object Indexing
Treatment Codes
Chemical Indexing
Patent Classification Codes
Numerical Data Indexing
Special Indexes

4. Inspec Overview Indexing quality and human curation of data is a USP
Reduces time needed to find relevant articles to a search
Gives context, interdisciplinary insight, and reduces ambiguity
All articles human-indexed with multiple keywords from a controlled Thesaurus (10,000) together with Classification Codes from a 5 level Subject Classification Index
Highly structured dataset, combined with a carefully maintained thesaurus & index, enables Analytics tools to be developed to give unique capabilities to researchers in our target market
Thesaurus + Domain Model > Ontologies + Data > Knowledge Graph + UI = Analytics Platform
Expanding from article discovery to industry insight

5. From Articles > Analytics
DRILL-DOWN TO SPECIFIC SUBJECT AREAS:
Inspec Analytics allows users to drill-down through up to 5 levels of subject classification, and 10,000 subject keywords, giving unparalleled insight into the related entities.
e.g.
Electrical engineering and electronics
Power systems and applications
Generating stations and plants
Thermal power stations and plants
Gas-turbine power stations and plants
Publishing trends over time
per institution
globally
Most prolific organisations on this concept
Top journals & conferences on this concept
Comparative ranking of competing organisations
Co-occurring scientific concepts
Related terms in Inspec thesaurus
Most prolific authors at an organisation
Most productive collaborations
Top funding bodies
Citation counts

6. Example: See published output from 101 institutions in Egypt or 25000 globally:
See top ranking subjects
5 level hierarchy of 3600 subject classifications
10,000 thesaurus keywords
Understand trends over time
Compare organisations, Identify potential research partners & ‘white space’ for new investment
Benchmark against local or international competitors
Determine target metrics for individual subject areas
Examine trends, top organisations & top co-occurring concepts for over 13,500 scientific concepts
NOTES:
IA has 101 organisations in Egypt, from 33 locations. In total there are 24,513 organisations worldwide.
Animated image 1 is the Alexandria University Institution Page. See trends of output over time, and most prolific subjects. Alexandria is #1 in the world in ‘LaPlace transforms’ as can be seen from the word-cloud
Animated image 2 shows the trend over 5 years for each of the 3,668 subjects that Cairo University has published on, showing increase or decrease. These can be compared to any of the other 25K organisations in the world to identify targets to increase in local or global ranking
Image 3 is a comparison of the top 5 universities in Egypt, showing that Ain Shams is strongest in Wind Power and Solar Power Generation, whereas Cairo University is top at Thermal power plants, and Alexandria at Nuclear Power plants
And image 4 is the Concept Page for Thermoelasticity, showing how Alexandria is #2 in the world, Zagazig is #1. King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia is #3
Finally the last image is a screenshot of the ‘search by location’ feature that’s in development, showing a search for organisations in Egypt

7. Project Deliverables and Product Reception
Significant market research carried out
Customer engagement :
Surveys, In depth interviews
Proofs of Concept & Mock-ups,
Prototypes delivered and continuous customer feedback garnered
Minimal Viable Product based around ‘Institutional Analytics’ delivered in April 2018, with continuing 2 week sprints
Significant customer engagement > moving from librarians (gatekeepers) to faculty (decision makers)
10 year revenue decline reversed within last 6 months
Former cancellations re-subscribing, and penetrating new markets (Governments, Corporates)

8. Summary
Existing market has moved away from traditional article discovery databases due to financial constraints, changing user behaviours & new technologies
Using Semantic technologies to enrich and link data in a legacy product can deliver significant financial benefits
Customer engagement & constant revalidation with customers to identify KPIs is key
Highly structured, human curated databases can be repurposed & recycled to provide new value propositions to regain and grow market share
It’s not all about the ‘shiny’ front end
Extensive domain modelling, curated structured data and niche-specificity are helpful
Poor data quality = poor end product

9. Tim Aitken Senior Product Manager, Inspec