Author: Ángel Torres – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
The incorporation of keywords implies a practical alternative to describe and register a document, for it, the thesaurus is used particularly, that unlike a dictionary, it is a list of words grouped according to the similarities of the meaning and not in alphabetical order. To sum up, thesaurus are used as a means of restricting the keywords by focusing on a controlled vocabulary that allows to order properly knowledge about the subject in matter.
It is estimated that more than 16,000 scientific journals use a thesaurus for the standardization of terms. Within this field, thesaurus are known for their functionality in the retrieval of information as well as in the search for specific terms, thus facilitating the refinement of the results and detailed comparisons of the categories. Therefore, the idea of integrating a thesaurus in a scientific journal, not only benefits the editors, but also the authors themselves, managing to locate publications under the same theme that can serve as bibliographic support, ideas for future research and suggestions regarding the limitations of the study.
Thesaurus can be organized according to areas of knowledge. In medicine, it stands out Mesh (Medical Subject Headings), engineering the IEEE thesaurus, ERIC thesaurus education, however, nowadays the plurilingual thesaurus are increasingly being used as is the case of AGRICOLA oriented to biological sciences and that is found in Spanish and English, OECD Macrothesaurus on economic and social development in Spanish, French and Spanish, and last but not least, there are two multidisciplinary thesaurus, Eurovoc that is published in the 27 languages of the European Union and the UNESCO thesaurus presented in English, Spanish, French and Russian. This last one, exposes a list that incorporates terms of education, science, culture, social and human sciences, information and communication, politics, law and economics. In fact, Comunicar journal applies the UNESCO thesaurus for the use of descriptors in both Spanish and standardized scientific English.
It is recommended to review the publication keywords of Comunicar School of Authors to know more about the matter.
