InSite Pro: Editorial Policies

Product Codes, and their corresponding Product Names, are controlled index terms that describe industries, products, services, and other business-related economic, demographic, or political information. They are essential elements of consistent and accurate indexing. The majority of PROMT & Trade & Industry records and some Computer Database records contain from one to three Product Codes.

The goal in indexing Product Codes is for indexers to assign as specific a Product Code as is available in the controlled vocabulary. A broader, more general code is used if the article’s approach is general or if no specific heading exists. For example, an article about minivans is indexed using the Product Code 3711124 Minivans, not with the broader code 37111 automobiles . An article discussing various types of vehicles is indexed with the code 37111 automobiles, even though it may contain some information about minivans.

Event Codes, and their corresponding Event Names, which are controlled index terms, are assigned to articles that discuss specific business activities such as acquisitions and mergers, product introduction, and market share. They are important in that they describe the aspect of the industry, product, or service discussed in the article. As with Product Codes, the most specific Event Code is used whenever possible.

Geographic Codes, and their corresponding Geographic Names, which are controlled index terms, are assigned to articles to indicate where the action of the article is taking place. As with Product Codes, the most specific Geographic Code is used whenever possible.

Company Name headings are controlled headings that consist of a company’s legal name. They are assigned to a record when the article being indexed focuses on one or more specific companies. Indexers omit Company Names from a database record if the article being indexed does not focus on one or more specific companies, or refers to numerous specific companies without focusing on any of them. For example, a three-page article names 10 computer software companies as examples of corporations that are targeting a particular market, the total amount of text referring to each company is about a paragraph, and little substantive information is provided on any of the companies. In this case, Company Names are not added to the database record.

The following is a non-inclusive list of commonly seen types of corporate entities that are always considered Company Name headings:

The following types of corporate entities are not considered Company Name headings.

Generally, Company Names are entered as the name of the company followed by the company designation abbreviation (such as Inc., Corp. or Ltd.). Examples:

The company designation is spelled out in full if it does not appear at the end of the Company Name. Examples:

Names of parent companies, subsidiaries, and affiliates are entered as separate Company Name headings. Example: IPS Corp. is a subsidiary of Concord Energy Inc. The correct form of the Company Name headings for these companies would be:

The names of some companies are identical or similar enough to cause confusion. The names may differ in the use of punctuation or spacing

When the names of two or more related or unrelated companies are identical or similar enough to be confusing, a parenthetical geographic designation will appear at the end of the Company Name headings for each company. This makes each Company Name heading unique. The parenthetical geographic designation uses the form: ([City], [State or Country])

A parenthetical geographic designation is not used if two distinct companies have identical Company Names but use different company designations.

Although divisions are not legally separate entities from their parent companies, many of them are entered separately. Only the final company designation is abbreviated.

However, a heading that consists of both the parent company (or a subsidiary company) and the division name is used when the division’s name merely describes a product or process or consists of the divisions’ geographical location.

If the division’s name does not include the company designation Div., then it is not added to the Company Name heading:

When a Company Name heading consist of both the division name and its parent company, it is the immediate parent company, not an ultimate parent, that is in the Company Name heading:

Databases available in: PROMT, Trade & Industry Database, Computer Database, Health & Wellness Database, Magazine Database.

Subject headings are controlled headings that describe subjects and concepts. They are essential elements of consistent and accurate indexing. The majority of records contain from one to three subject headings. Usually, at least one subject heading is entered into each database record.

The goal of subject indexing is for indexers to assign as specific a Subject heading as is available in the controlled vocabulary. A broader, more general heading is used if the article’s approach is general or if no specific heading exists. For example, an article about laptop computers is indexed using the Subject heading Laptop computers, not with the broader heading Computers. An article discussing which type of computer to purchase is indexed with the heading Computers, even though it may contain some information about laptops.

Databases available in: Trade & Industry Database, Computer Database, Health & Wellness Database, Magazine Database.

Named person headings are headings that consist of the name of living and dead individuals, fictional characters, deities, and mythological figures. The majority of these headings are names of real persons who are prominent, infamous, or written about frequently. Indexers assign a named person heading to a database record if the article focuses on the individual. If the article’s main topic is an individual, such as is the case with interviews, profiles, obituaries, etc., then a named person heading is used.

A named person heading is avoided when the individual is not the main focus of the article, even though he or she may figure prominently in the topic of the article. For these cases, the individual’s name is placed in the title annotation and/or abstract instead.

When two or more persons have the same name or very similar names both persons are prominent, the persons are distinguished by adding a parenthetical phrase after one or both of their names.

The basic form of entry for named persons who are not fictitious, legendary, biblical, or mythological is:

Initials are always followed by periods, and there are no spaces between successive initials.

The most complete form of the name given in the article is used unless the person is best known to the general public by the shorter form. Nicknames are not included unless the person is best known to the general public by his or her nickname.

Titles such as Ms., Dr., Esq., PhD., etc. are omitted. Titles such as Lord, Judge, Father, Sister, etc. are omitted if a more complete form of the person’s name is given.

For Anglo compound surnames that are not hyphenated, the last element of the name is used as a surname, and the other names are treated as middle names. However, if the article gives or implies a different form of entry, that form is used.

When an individual is well known to the general public under a form of his or her name that does not follow the basic form of entry, usually the best-known form of the name is used. This can apply to nicknames, initials, shortened forms, one-word names, and pseudonyms.

If the name of a real person is in an unusual form and the article gives no other form of the name, it is entered as seen in the article. The name may be inverted, if doing so makes sense. Titles or nicknames may be placed after the name and separated with a comma.

Databases available in: Trade & Industry Database, Computer Database, Health & Wellness Database, Magazine Database.

Trade Names are used when named products or services are the main focus of the article being indexed. Trade Names are names of:

Trade Names typically consist of the manufacturer’s name and/or the product name followed by a product modifier in parentheses. Examples:

Company designators are omitted following a manufacturer’s name in Trade Names. Possessive forms of the company’s name are not included.

The acronym or shortened version of the following manufacturers is always used when they are part of a Trade Name:

When the name of a company’s subsidiary or subsidiaries includes the name of the parent company, only the parent company’s name is used in the Trade Name.

The manufacturer’s name is omitted from the Trade Name heading in these cases:

The words model, version, number, no., and series are omitted when they preface a model or version number in a product name.

Parentheses are never included in a Trade Name heading except as a product modifier. If an article states a product name that includes parentheses in it, the element between the parentheses is ignored if it does not help to make the product name unique

include the parenthetical element without enclosing it in parentheses. Example: The product’s name is (E)JES and the modifier is printer software. The Trade Name heading is: EJES (Printer software).

Names of computer hardware products follow this format when being used as Trade Name headings:

The entire Company Name, excluding the final company designator, is included for hardware Trade Name headings.

The manufacturer’s name is omitted from the heading if the hardware manufacturer’s full Company Name also is the full name of the product, which can make the Trade Name redundant.

Names of computer software products follow this format when being used as Trade Name headings:

The manufacturer’s names are excluded from all software Trade Name headings, except when the manufacturer’s name, or part of the name, is in the product’s name. This commonly occurs with Microsoft Corp. and Lotus Development Corp.

Software products often include a version and/or release number. They are always included as part of the Trade Name. Usually, the version number is to the left of the decimal point and the release number is to the right of the decimal point. If the article gives a version/release number as a whole number without a decimal place, a decimal point and a zero are added. The words version or release are omitted. If the version/release number is 1.0 or 1, it is omitted entirely.

The article gives the product’s name of PC Tools Version 7 Release 5. The Trade Name is:

Databases available in: Trade & Industry Database, Computer Database, Health & Wellness Database, Magazine Database.

Author names are included for all articles that have authors. All of an article’s authors are included, and there is no limit to the number of author names. Author names are entered in inverted form: last name, first name. If the author's name appears in various forms, Gale Group often makes an attempt to standardize the name. If an author’s name appears in the original article as only initials, but a complete form of the author’s name is known from the publication’s masthead, then the complete form of the author’s name is entered into the record. If a record includes a sidebar article with a different author from the main article, then the names of both the main article’s author and the sidebar’s author are included in the author field.

Databases available in: Trade & Industry Database, Computer Database, Health & Wellness Database, Magazine Database and PROMT.

Article Types are a kind of standardized title annotation used to identify certain kinds of articles, such as editorials, interview, etc., but they are searched as their own field in addition to being searchable in the Title field. Article Types are one- or two-word descriptions that appear in parentheses following the article title and any other title annotation. Article Types are not assigned to all articles. Furthermore, an individual article may have more than one Article Type. There are 20 standard Article Types used across Trade & Industry Database, Magazine Database, Health & Wellness Database, and Computer Database. In addition, Health & Wellness Database and Computer Database each use two more Article Types unique to those databases.

ARTICLE TYPE		DEFINITION
Abstract		An article that consists entirely of an abstract of another article. Used only in specific journals that contain long abstracts: JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association; American Family Physician; AIDS Weekly Plus; and Cancer Weekly Plus. Used in Health & Wellness Database only.
Brief Article		An article that does not meet the general length requirements for a particular database but that, for special reasons, is selected for indexing. Articles in cover-to-cover journals or in Trade & Industry expanded selection criteria journals are examples of cases where articles shorter than the general article selection guidelines are indexed. Not used for short reviews, correction notices, or articles in newsletters, newswires, or electronic feed journals for which no hard copy exists.
Buyers Guide		An article which is a list of products with specifications, such as features, price, manufacturer, etc., in the form of a chart or a table. An article with consumer information designed to help a purchaser by giving general information on types of products Not used for articles that rate products on the market. These type of articles are considered product evaluations. Purchasing is the sub-topic assigned when indexing Buyers Guides.
Bibliography		An article that primarily consists of a list of books or references. Not used for an article that merely includes a bibliography at the end. In these cases the title will be annotated with "includes bibliography."
Column		A by-lined article whose content is personal and opinion-oriented. Usually, a column is differentiated from regular articles by its layout or by the use of a recurring title. Columns do not have to appear in every issue of a journal or be authored by staff writers. The writings of guest authors and columnists are assigned this Article Type if the layout of the article suggests a column and if the content is personal or opinion-oriented. This Article Type may also be used in newspapers and tabloids to include any signed, guest editorials that appear on a newspaper's OP-ED pages, regardless of content. Not used if an article merely looks like a column (i.e., it has an author and is a regularly appearing feature or has a recurring title) but the content is mainly a straight reporting of facts. Article Types Editorial and Column are not assigned to the same article.
Company Profile		An in-depth article on a company's management or history. Articles should have an overall coverage of the company and not focus on particular incidents. Company Profiles are often, but not always, lengthy articles. For articles from regional business newspapers in Trade & Industry, this Article Type is also assigned to Proxy Reports as well as to in-depth articles on a company's management.
Correction Notice		Used in journals that correct, retract, or provide additions to articles published previously in the same journal. Not used for letters to the editor that indicate errors or corrections.
Cover Story		A major article that is indicated by an illustration on the cover of a magazine. It typically offers in-depth treatment of a subject. A journal may have more than one cover story. If two or three articles cover different aspects of the same subject featured on the cover, then this Article Type is assigned to each of these articles. Not used for newspapers, newsletters, tabloids, newswires, and most academic and law journals, and not used when a journal issue has a theme that applies to all or most of its feature articles.
Directory		An article that consists primarily of a listing of names, addresses, and telephone numbers. The main intent of a directory is supplying *locational* information. Other types of listings are assigned the Article Types Buyers Guide or Illustration.
Editorial		A signed or unsigned magazine or newspaper column written by an editor of the publication or labeled as an editorial. Editorials are expressions of opinion and usually do not contain straightforward reporting of news. Article Types Editorial and Column are not assigned to the same article.
Evaluation		An article that offers concrete, evaluative information about the strengths and weaknesses of a consumer product or products or telecommunications service. Articles must contain evidence that the impartial author or authors have used and/or formally tested the products and must contain substantive information about the product, including specifications, price, availability, target market, etc. Not used for articles discussing product lines, as opposed to specific products.
Glossary		An article that consists primarily of a list of words and their definitions. Not used if there is significant text connected with the list of words or if the glossary is a sidebar to a main article. In these cases the title will be annotated with "includes glossary."
Illustration		An article which is pictorial or graphic and for which there is little or no text. This could include stand-alone graphs and tables, photographic essays, etc. The caption of the illustration may be the same as the article title. Not used to indicate that an article is merely accompanied by graphics or illustrations.
Industry Overview		An article which gives a broad treatment of the history, development, market situation, trends, or outlook of an industry or group of industries.
Interview		An article whose primary focus is an interview with a person. Interviews may appear in question and answer format or in a more narrative style. If the article reporting on the interview contains other material, it can still be assigned the Article Type Interview if the principal focus is the interview. Not used if the interview format or the person interviewed is incidental to the content of the article.
Letter to the Editor		A letter written by a prominent person to a newspaper or magazine.
Obituary		A notice of a person's death that gives an overview of the person's life and accomplishments. These articles are normally labeled in the publication as Obituary. Not used for articles that cite the deceased's accomplishments if the article was published a considerable amount of time after that person's death. In those cases, the person's name is indexed with the sub-topic Biography or Appreciation.
Product Announcement		An article announcing the availability of a new product and briefly describing it. Usually the following information is given in Product Announcements: brand name of the product date of availability a reference to the release or introduction of the product price a reader information number at the end of the article Not used if the article does not supply a product name, concerns a line or family of products, or describes products that are not currently available but are under development. The sub-topic Product introduction is used under the Trade Name headings and under topical headings describing types of products when indexing articles assigned Article Type Product Announcement. (The sub-topic can be used for other kinds of articles and not every use of Product introduction constitutes a Product Announcement.)
Panel Discussion		An article which gives the text of a panel discussion or summarizes the contributions of a panel's members. If the speakers' or panelists' names are significant, they appear in the Named Person field; otherwise the names should appear in the title annotation or abstract. They are not entered as authors.
Pamphlet		Used when the text source is a medical or consumer pamphlet. Used in Health & Wellness Database only.
Review		An article describing and evaluating a single creative work, a performance or an establishment. The article must contain some indication that the review is based on experience of the reviewer and contain some judgment on the part of the reviewer about the quality of the work, performance, or establishment. The review categories are: Audio-visual materials Books Circuses Comedies Concerts Theater and dance performances Hotels, motels, and inns Motion pictures Nightclubs Operas and operettas Periodicals Restaurants and bars Sound and video recordings Television and radio programs
Technical		An articles that provides technical information about how something works, details of hardware design or programming techniques, or the results of theoretical research. Used in Computer Database only.
Transcript		An article that consists entirely or in part of a document, speech, proceeding, or other kind of communication.
Tutorial		An article that tells how to do something or that explain how something works. This can include articles that explain how to install a piece of equipment, how to use a particular kind of software, how to write code to accomplish a particular action, or other "how-to" type articles. Used in Computer Database only.

The title field contains the article’s title and any annotation added by the indexer. The article’s title is usually a transcript of the title, and often the subtitle, as it appears in the original publication. Titles of review article records, however, are usually not transcriptions. Instead, the name of the work, performance, or establishment being reviewed is used as the title of a review record. For brief company news articles or newsletter articles that have no titles, a bolded company name or a highlighted first few words of an article may be used as the article title.

In transcribing the title, indexers put title capitalization's into lower case and leave only the first letter of the first word and all proper nouns capitalized. Variant or British spellings are maintained, but obvious misspellings in the original are corrected. If the title has a serious error, such as being the wrong title for the article or containing a factual error, the title is transcribed as printed but annotated with the corrected information.

Subtitles are included as part of the title, following the main title by either a colon or semicolon, if they are not too long. Headers, on the other hand, are omitted from the title, but if the information in the header is important, it may be put in parentheses following the title as an annotation.

A title annotation is text that provides additional information on the content or format of an article. The title annotation is considered part of the title field in a record. Hence, words in the title annotation are searchable as words in the title. Title annotations may be the indexer’s own words that further explain the title or content of an article, a standard word or phrase, or they may be text taken directly from the journal, such as section, series, heading, special report, or department titles. Not all titles have annotations, and a title may have multiple annotations. Title annotations appear in the record immediately following the title in one or more separate sets of parentheses.

The Computer Database has some additional, standard title annotations used exclusively in that database:

Apple Computer Inc.	Apple
Compaq Computer Corp.	Compaq
Digital Equipment Corp.	DEC
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company Inc.	Du Pont
Eastman Kodak Co.	Kodak
Hewlett-Packard Co.	HP
International Business Machines Corp.	IBM
Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken N.V.	Philips