Voigt K, Brüggemann R
GSF-Research Center for Environment and Health, Projektgruppe Umweltgefährdungspotentiale von Chemikalien (PUC), Oberschleissheim, Germany.
Toxicology. 1995 Jun 26;100(1-3):225-40. doi: 10.1016/0300-483x(95)03092-t.
Databases in science and technology dealing with toxicology subjects are of great and increasing interest to the scientific community. International hosts pay their tribute in creating toxicology clusters as a user-aid. Toxicology clusters of DataStar, DIALOG, DIMDI and STN are listed and compared. At the German National Research Centre for Environment and Health an 'Information System for Environmental Chemicals' has been developed. Within this research project approximately 400 online databases have been evaluated and the results are stored in the Metadatabank of Online Databases called DADB. A further step in this project is to assist the users of these metadatabases to choose the most appropriate database(s) for a special query. The retrieval of information out of a multitude of differently structured databases can be optimized using different evaluation criteria. We distinguished three groups of evaluation criteria: (1) general evaluation criteria, e.g. size of database, update frequency, cost of online search, etc., (2) evaluation criteria based on the characterization of environmental chemicals, and (3) evaluation criteria based on environmental-relevant data-types. We studied the influence of a number of different criteria in order to rank a set of objects, in this particular case toxicology databases. We used a six-number scoring system. The scoring is carried out using the scientific background of lattice theory and its graphical evaluation. The application of this scoring system for toxicologically-relevant databases, which is still in an early development stage, is useful in selecting the most appropriate database(s) in accordance with special items of interest. Applying our five chosen criteria, the databank CA (Chemical Abstracts) turns out to be the best, followed by four other databanks, which cannot be compared with each other.
科学技术领域中涉及毒理学主题的数据库，正受到科学界越来越多的关注。国际数据库服务提供商创建毒理学数据库集群，为用户提供帮助。本文列出并比较了DataStar、DIALOG、DIMDI和STN的毒理学数据库集群。德国国家环境与健康研究中心开发了一个“环境化学物质信息系统”。在这个研究项目中，大约400个在线数据库得到了评估，结果存储在名为DADB的在线数据库元数据库中。该项目的下一步是帮助这些元数据库的用户为特定查询选择最合适的数据库。利用不同的评估标准，可以优化从众多结构不同的数据库中检索信息的过程。我们区分了三组评估标准：（1）一般评估标准，如数据库规模、更新频率、在线搜索成本等；（2）基于环境化学物质特征的评估标准；（3）基于与环境相关的数据类型的评估标准。我们研究了许多不同标准对一组对象（在这种情况下是毒理学数据库）进行排名的影响。我们使用了一个六分制评分系统。评分是基于格理论的科学背景及其图形评估进行的。这种评分系统在毒理学相关数据库中的应用仍处于早期开发阶段，有助于根据特殊兴趣点选择最合适的数据库。应用我们选择的五个标准，数据库CA（化学文摘）被证明是最好的，其次是其他四个无法相互比较的数据库。
