Search help: IEEE Xplore

DEVONagent
1

I have to admit, I’ve always been a bit flummoxed by DevonAgent, especially when it comes to searches where it’s not just a pretty front end for Google. But I now have a task where it would come in pretty handy, and I’m stuck.

I’d like to use it as a front end to search the IEEE digital library, the entrance page for which is here: IEEE Xplore

My naive attempt to create a search plugin resulted in DA using both Google and Bing to search that specific page with, of course, zero results. Help?

(I am an IEEE member, but paper titles and abstracts are part of the public database, not behind the paywall.)

(In this case, I’m specifically looking for information about ferroelectric transistors, but I use IEEE papers often in my work. A general purpose answer would be very helpful.)

Thank you all for your kind assistance.

2

Did you actually create a new plug-in or just a new search set? This website requires unfortunately JavaScript, otherwise no results are returned. But currently only HTML pages are supported, a future release will improve this.

3

I created a plug-in with, as I said, poor results. Perhaps a search set would be a better choice?

As I said, the database in question is not paywalled, and so is accessible via a Google site search. So I guess the specific task I want to set for DA is to search the IEEE Xplore database’s public/Google index for [search terms] in [date range] and return a list of pages/abstracts for further analysis/refinement.

4

Progress. Sort of. I now have a search set that is correctly visiting the site and finding tons of results, then throwing most of them away as “identical.” Which they are not.

The same query, posed directly to Google Scholar (the plugin I’m using) gives 8,000 results. Posed to the IEEE site’s own search tool, I get 2,000 results. Now, obviously I’d like to narrow that down a bit, which is why I want to use DA in the first place. But 12? Clearly I have failed to define what I want.

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5

Please disable JavaScript, then open two results. Most likely the web pages are indeed identical without JavaScript.

6

Disabling Javascript did not change the results.

They are not identical. Each URL of the form ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/[number] is a unique entry in IEEE’s database. See for example
Non-Volatile Memory utilizing Reconfigurable Ferroelectric Transistors to enable Differential Read and Energy-Efficient In-Memory Computation | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

7

I just checked this, the rendered results are indeed empty & identical as the website requires JavaScript. But DEVONagent does not (yet) use CSS or JavaScript while searching/crawling, only the HTML source is used so far.

8

So DevonAgent is effectively useless for my single most important data source? Good to know.

9

You could enable Express searching, this option skips the crawling & filtering but digests & summaries are limited in this case. Or simply force this mode via the SkipsCrawling key in the plug-in:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>CrawlDelay</key>
	<real>0.125</real>
	<key>Description</key>
	<string>The IEEE Xplore digital library is a powerful resource for discovery of scientific and technical content published by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and its publishing partners.</string>
	<key>EngineSite</key>
	<string>ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/</string>
	<key>Identifier</key>
	<string>ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/</string>
	<key>Info</key>
	<string>IEEEXplore Plugin</string>
	<key>LinksMatching</key>
	<string>*ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/*</string>
	<key>Name</key>
	<string>IEEEXplore</string>
	<key>Operators</key>
	<integer>59</integer>
	<key>SkipsCrawling</key>
	<true/>
	<key>Version</key>
	<string>1.0</string>
</dict>
</plist>