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I hate missing crucial papers!

4/2/2013

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Have you ever had that sick feeling in your stomach when you find a journal paper published years ago, that is very relevant to your current work, but you had no idea it existed?

This exact scenario happened to me, when I was trawling through the reference list of a taphonomy paper. I came across a paper published in 2004 titled 'Taphonomy of Freshwater Turtles: Decay and Disarticulation in Controlled Experiments' from the Journal of Taphonomy. My immediate thought: "Hooray! Here's another paper on reptile decay, of which there are very few!" Rapidly followed by: "Errr, how did I miss this? What else have I missed?"

When I'm looking for journal papers, I normally start with Google Scholar and use some broad search terms, and then sometimes try the UQ library search engine. To find something like the 2004 turtle decay paper, I would use something like 'taphonomy reptiles experiment'. These are the results you'd get:
Picture
In short, the first 10 pages of this search did not turn up the 2004 turtle decay paper. It did turn up a PDF from the Journal of Taphonomy, but for a completely different paper (Brand et al., 2003. 'Decay and Disarticulation of Small Vertebrates in Controlled Experiments'). So I don't feel too terrible for having missed it first time round.

Searching for the exact title doesn't even bring up a reference or citation. So, I decided to search for 'Journal of Taphonomy' and look what I got:
Picture
Different papers from the same journal, but indexed by journal name instead of paper name!
So, the answer to how I missed this paper is relatively simple I guess:
  1. The Journal of Taphonomy is not open access, and our library does not have a subscription to it. So papers listed in it would not appear in the UQ library search engine.
  2. The papers from this journal are not indexed properly on Google Scholar: the search results show all the papers titled 'Journal of Taphonomy', but with authors and year of publication listed below correctly.
  3. Finally, this particular turtle taphonomy paper is not indexed by Google at all.
I think it's a real shame for anyone who publishes in the Journal of Taphonomy that their papers (at least for me) were very difficult to find, if at all.
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    About the author

    Dr Caitlin Syme is a palaeontologist studying the taphonomy (preservation state) of fossil non-avian dinosaurs, crocodiles and fish from the Winton Formation, Queensland, Australia. Think forensic science or CSI for fossils, and you're on the right track!

    Posts on this blog focus mainly on vertebrate palaeontology and taphonomy, as well early career researcher (ERC) productivity tips and insights.


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