Old:Keyword Sampling Methodology

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Article Keyword Sampling

For a sample, we used a recent issue from five Dryad “partner” journals:
 * American Naturalist (January 2007)
 * Molecular Biology and Evolution (January 2007)
 * Systematics Biology (October 2006)
 * Molecular Ecology (January 2007)
 * Evolution (January 2007)

From each issue, we captured the names and authors of research articles and keywords associated with them - as they were provided online - and dumped them into a spreadsheet. The accumulated raw data consisted of 104 articles and 600 keywords.

The keywords, approximately 90% of which had to be defined by researching on the web, were grouped into seven (7) general categories:
 * Taxon
 * Geography / Ecology / Populations
 * Time Period
 * Phenotype
 * Genotype
 * Method
 * Evolutionary Aspect

We then counted the keywords in each category for each journal, and the numerical data was transferred into a table.

(Note: Another member of the team, more familiar with the domain, remarked that the categorizations could benefit from further editing. Also, during the categorization of keywords, the “Geography / Ecology / Populations” category was formed. Ideally, these would have been kept separate. However, more domain expertise and time would have been necessary to do this properly.)