IEEE Xplore. Version 1.3

Citation

Griffin, L. (2002), "IEEE Xplore. Version 1.3", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 285-285. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.4.285.12

Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the most respected name in the electrical and computer engineering fields. The company publishes over 125 of the most frequently cited journals and transactions in the various disciplines within these subjects, as well as hundreds of conference proceedings and technical standards. Their journals and transactions include titles such as IEEE Spectrum, IEE Systems Engineering and the Annals of the History of Computing. One would expect them to deliver quality content accessible through a well‐designed interface, which is exactly what is available in release 1.3 (released in October 2001) of IEEE Xplore, which includes data back to 1988.

Anyone can browse the tables of contents of the journals free of charge. In order to be able to search and receive abstracts and full‐text (PDF files), users will need to either be a member of IEEE, which will provide them with electronic access to the journals they subscribe to in print, or a subscriber to one of the IEEE Xplore packages. The features added by gaining this level of access release the true power of the IEEE Xplore interface.

The database is expensive for institutional subscribers. A site license costs $91,995 for one campus with 15 simultaneous users. Access is provided through IP authentication. For a single simultaneous user, the annual cost is $77,995, and for access from a standalone PC the cost is $59,995. At present IEEE does not sell individual subscriptions to Xplore.

The search engine is excellent. The basic search provides the simple and advanced features one would expect to find, and the advanced search has all of the command language searching power normally found in an expert search. Results can be sorted by year, publication title or relevance. The author search is especially helpful, as there is an automatic browse feature for the author’s name.

Coverage is particularly good: there are over 740,000 articles currently available, and more are being added daily. The database includes all of IEEE’s publications and conference proceedings since 1988, as well as all current standards.

If there is any shortcoming of this site, it lies in the e‐mail alerts. Far from being a truly useful SDI service, which would save searches and update users on new information in their field, the e‐mail alert service of IEEE simply lets users check off titles and receive tables of contents pages in e‐mail as new issues come out. This is useful, but not nearly as useful as a true SDI. At times I have found a few of the older conference proceedings missing, often in the middle of runs. This is a rare occurrence, however, and some of the journal publications are available online before they appear in print.

The problems within IEEE Xplore are minor when compared with the awesome power felt by people who have this high quality information available quickly and simply at their desktops, at a level that is achieved by very few in the database industry.

This review was first published in Reference Reviews Volume 16 Number 4 2002.