The University of Adelaide CENTRE FOR AUTOMOTIVE SAFETY RESEARCH

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TitleDeveloping the injury prevention and safety promotion thesaurus, international English edition: an interdisciplinary tool for indexing and searching for research literature. Progress Report 1
AuthorsLawrence DW, Guard A, Meier AJ, Laflamme L
Year2006
TypeJournal Article
AbstractIntroduction: Research relevant to injury prevention and safety promotion (IPSP) is conducted within more than 30 disciplines. A thesaurus under development identifies and clarifies important IPSP concepts from these disciplines and standardizes their corresponding terms. The primary function of the IPSP thesaurus will be as an indexing and search tool so that users can conduct online searches with satisfactory completeness but with a minimum amount of irrelevant material. Without this cross-disciplinary thesaurus, researchers may miss relevant information in parallel or disparate fields, which in turn may lead them to recreate information already developed or to miss important connections that could advance each discipline. Methods: The five-year development process involves (1) gathering candidate concepts and their terms by examining existing thesauri and glossaries, reviewing the archives of 30 professional journals, and analyzing search terms used by visitors to the SafetyLit website; (2) compiling the terms for IPSP-related concepts into a list with a categorical hierachy; (3) convening panels of experts to advise the process and (4) publishing the final print and electronic versions of the thesaurus. Progress: This paper describes the overall project and its progress so far. We are currently working on compiling the structured list (step 2). To date, more than 8800 IPSP-related terms have been selected for inclusion. These terms are being defined and placed into a suitable taxonomic hierarchy created for this project.
Journal TitleSafety Science
Journal Volume (Issue)44(4)
Page Range279-296
Page Count18

Reference
Lawrence DW, Guard A, Meier AJ, Laflamme L (2006). Developing the injury prevention and safety promotion thesaurus, international English edition: an interdisciplinary tool for indexing and searching for research literature. Progress Report 1. Safety Science, 44(4), 279-296.