Wilson OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition

Inclusion Policy

The OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition database covers data intended to serve researchers in business, the humanities, general science, education, law, and the social sciences. The journals included in this database are in large part a result of recommendations made by the American Library Association’s Committee on Wilson Indexes. That is why you will find in this database few pamphlets, one time government publications and short articles of little research value, that can be found in other vendor's products with high record counts. Wilson's high indexing standards and its inclusion of the "best" journals available are reflected in WilsonWeb search results.

What factors does the above mentioned Committee use to rank a journal that is recommended for OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition?

• Long-term reference value
• Indexability
• Scholarship
• Peer review
• Library holdings (as determined by WorldCat holdings)
• Reviewer recommendations
• Presence on published core lists
• ISI impact factors (where available)
• Indexing by other A&I services
• Publisher reputation
• Prestige of editorial board
• Availability of full-text in electronic format (SFX-linkability)

Covering hundreds of specialty journals and popular magazines, the full-text content builds and supplements a library's periodicals collection.

Finding the information desired in a big database like OmniFile Mega is easy with access by subject terms, keywords, journal titles, author, personal names, dates, proximity and Boolean operators, or any combination of elements!

How can a single search encompass coverage as wide-ranging as that provided by Wilson OmniFile Full Text? Diligent editing reconciles subject headings in the various specialties for uniformity throughout, so that the search won’t miss a single relevant citation. What’s more, the acclaimed Wilson Name Authority File keeps corporate and personal names uniform throughout the database, so you can be confident that name searches are thorough and yield the desired results every time.

Geographical Coverage

OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition is truly international in scope. Although heavily focused on English language journals from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, there are many other journals from other European countries like France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Denmark and Poland, resulting in thousands of articles in native languages, other than English. There are also journals published in China, Japan, Korea, etc.

It should be noted that WilsonWeb includes a free electronic translation service that will translate the many English language documents into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Korean.

Gap Fill Policy

Although OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition offers unparalleled depth to its coverage of journals over many years, there are sometimes unavoidable gaps in coverage, usually a result of publisher issues. Whenever identified, Wilson makes every attempt to fill any infrequent gaps in its coverage. There is also an ongoing effort to include new subjects/journals of interest to researchers, ensuring its currency and relevancy.

Archive Policy

Although OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition database includes coverage "in earnest" from 1983 forward, there are approximately 53,000+ articles that were published prior to 1983 that are included. Although, it should be pointed out that Wilson's efforts are focused upon the future while maintaining currency.

As an aside, Wilson has released multiple separate "retrospective" databases in the various subject areas included in OmniFile Mega, some of which covers content back to 1890 and earlier.

Embargo Rules

Embargo rules are determined by publishers.

WilsonWeb has avoided, whenever possible, artificially inflating its journal count by offering journals with embargos attached. WilsonWeb offers far fewer embargoed titles than many other vendors. It is recommended that Wilson's Journal Directory, found at http://www.hwwilson.com, be visited. There, a complete list of the embargoed titles may be generated.

Update Frequency

Daily

Content Classification

OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition content is classified in several ways.

• Subject Areas: Applied Science & Technology, Art, Biological & Agricultural, Business, Education, General Science, Humanities, Legal, Library & Information Science, Current Events (Readers' Guide) and Social Science.
• Document Types are classifications that are too numerous to list here (46 separate classifications are included), however, included are such categories as feature articles, book reviews, books, biographies, autobiographies, art reproduction, fiction, film review, etc.

Journals are classified into Peer-Reviewed and Non-Peer Reviewed. Note that Non-Peer Reviewed articles include many that are considered scholarly (but not peer-reviewed by Wilson's higher standards) and some more popular journals.

In WilsonWeb, a journal is identified as peer-reviewed by H.W. Wilson professional librarians and/or product specialists who look for either one of the following:

A description of the journal's peer review process in its instructions to authors or manuscript submission guidelines.

Or

Notice of an independent editorial review board in the journal's front matter. The academic or scholarly affiliation of each member of the board must be identified.
(Those without affiliations are presumed not to be independent.)

What makes Wilson's assignment of a peer review label uniquely reliable is that we provide it only after first-hand examination of the journal. We do not rely on secondary sources such as Ulrich's International Periodical Directory or our own perceptions of a journal's scholarship.

The peer review label in WilsonWeb means literally that an independent scholar has recommended the article for publication. Users should be aware that many journals with serious and even scholarly content do not use the peer review process.

Important Question: Are all articles contained in a Peer Reviewed journal peer reviewed, as well?

Wilson has clearly stated in our definition of peer reviewed, that it refers to journals, not individual articles. This is the industry standard. The reason that those who follow this industry standard are all unanimous in identifying peer-reviewed journals rather than articles is because the journals themselves rarely indicate whether individual items are peer-reviewed. As a rule of thumb, a reasonable person can assume that editorials, short items, and book reviews are not peer reviewed. It’s also quite common in science journals to have a section of shorter communications that don’t undergo peer review in order to present results to the public more quickly. Sometimes a peer-reviewed journal will publish a long paper presented at a conference, and conference papers are almost never peer reviewed, but the journal won’t label it as non-peer-reviewed. The fact is, you can never be 100% certain that an individual item in a peer-reviewed journal has been reviewed, by how many reviewers, or whether it was revised or not in the course of the reviews.

Unlike the HW Wilson Company, there are some major vendors in our industry who have put aside this key distinction…returning every record in a peer reviewed journal, regardless of length or individual peer review status. In fact. Wilson actually goes a step beyond those other services in allowing users to quickly scan an undifferentiated list of results and pick out the peer review items. We have identified any article taken from a peer reviewed journal, identifying it with a small mortarboard hat icon, as illustrated below:

Keywords and Indexes

WilsonWeb's OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition supports keyword searching. The keyword search searches the citation, including all indexed fields, plus the full text of the article, if desired. Indexed fields that are included in a keyword search for this database, includes the following:
Title, Personal Author, Journal Name, Source, Publication Year, Abstract, Subject(s), Peer Reviewed Journal, Physical Description, ISSN, Language of Document, Document Type, Update Code, Date Entered, Database, Accession Number and Persistent URL, plus, the Text field when Full Text is available.

While in the Browse mode, WilsonWeb provides additional indexing fields, including:
Subject(s), Abstract Indicator, Personal Author, Childrens Literature, Country of Publication, Database, Dewey Decimal Number, Document Type, Fiction Indicator, Full Text Indicator, Government Publication, ISBN, ISSN, Journal Issue, Journal Name, LC Control Number, Language of Document, NAICS Code, Physical Description, Publication Year, SIC Code, Series, Statue Jurisdiction, and Update Code.

Authority Files

Yes.
NAME AUTHORITY WORK
H.W. Wilson controls names used as subjects. No user should have to search under multiple forms of a name. Personal names are cited consistently across all the Wilson indexes and databases.

Names are established according to the latest revision of AACR2, so H.W. Wilson names are consistent with conventional library cataloging. (The Names Department staff—who are responsible for maintaining the Wilson Names Authority File—are all professional librarians.

New names are routinely checked against the Library of Congress's LCWeb names authority file, to ensure consistency with national cataloging standards. Chances are, names will be cited in H.W. Wilson files the same way as they appear in a library's own online catalog, if they are indeed the same person.

All personal name subjects are carefully checked against the individual periodical databases, including retrospective files, to avoid duplication and to distinguish between similar but different instances of names.

Similar but distinct names are distinguished from one another by expansion (e.g. inclusion of a full name instead of initials) or the addition of dates.

In cases where the form of a name is uncertain, H.W. Wilson names authority staff will search for an authoritative form in appropriate dictionaries, encyclopedias, and directories. The specific sources depend on the discipline, and on the dates and nationalities of the person in question.

H.W. Wilson names authority staff routinely establish cross-references from variant forms of a name to the form we cite. WilsonWeb users will be automatically switched from variants to preferred forms of names.

CONTROLLED VOCABULARY

An OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition database utilizes the H.W. Wilson thesaurus which is a hierarchical list of terms that are used to index databases with a consistent, controlled vocabulary. Controlling the terms that are used for indexing does this. Terms that are not in the thesaurus cannot be used as subject headings. Indicating which of the alternatives should be "used also" controls the use of synonyms.

Citation Linking

Yes. Citation linking, includes the following:

• Linking to Wilson's "free" SFX link resolver or the library's own resolver.
• E-Journals
• Document Delivery Services
• Holdings information (library OPACs)
• InterLibrary Loan

Full Text Linking

Yes.

• WilsonWeb's OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition database is an OpenURL target and OpenURL Source. It allows users from external sources to link to WilsonWeb full text, as well as, allowing Wilson users to link to other sources of full text. This also includes linking to the Web and search engines.
• Links to e-journals within the database's collection.
• Opacs & A-Z Lists.
• InterLibrary Loan services
• Federated Search Tools

Other Information

Wilson Web includes many interface customizable features, some of which can be accomplished by the user during the session, plus other settings that can be done my the system administrator.

It should be noted that WilsonWeb's definition of Peer-Reviewed articles are held to a higher standard than most other vendor's definitions, ensuring the highest quality of results for advanced researchers.

OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition database's "All-Smart Search" is truly a more advanced type of searching, resulting in more relevant articles for all levels of users.