The role of thesaurus in the internationalization of scientific publication

Abstract

The internationalization of scientific production is related to the exchange of projects, ongoing research, and research results between nations. In general, the information by which an article can be retrieved includes title words, abstract words, author's name, bibliographic information (name of journal, volume, issue, etc.), and keywords. This article aims to specifically highlight the relevance of the process of choosing keywords to represent the content of publications, called indexing. This activity implies limiting the complexity of the content, as the context, which gives semantic reference to words, is drastically reduced when a term is presented in isolation. In addition to the semantic, formal, and contextual variations, the idiomatic variations of words add a fundamental issue for the dissemination of scientific production in multilingual contexts such as the web. One of the solutions to increase the quality of indexing – and as a consequence of the recovery – is the adoption of instruments that standardize the terminology, thus avoiding the effects arising from linguistic ambiguities. The instrument most commonly used in scientific circles is the thesaurus, which provides terminological and semantic control, and its relationship structure between terms and concepts takes up part of its contextualization. In addition to the theoretical discussion, this article also brings examples of thesaurus available on the web. The article was presented at the V Art Research Journal Meeting and the II National Forum of Journal Editors in the Area of ??Arts, held at the UNESP Institute of Arts, in São Paulo, on May 26th and 27th, 2017.