Andrew Smeall writes

> We do use MeSH for those subjects, but this only applies to about 40% of
> our papers. In Engineering, for example, we've had more trouble finding an
> open taxonomy with the same level of depth as MeSH.

  Have you found one?

> For most internal applications, we need 100% coverage of all
> subjects.

  Meaning you want to have a scheme that provides at least
  one class for any of the papers that you publish? Why?

> The temptation to build a new vocabulary is strong, because it's the
> fastest way to get to something that is non-proprietary and universal. We
> can merge existing open vocabularies like MeSH and PLOS to get most of the
> way there, but we then need to extend that with concepts from our corpus.

  I am not sure I follow this. Surely, if you don't have categories
  for engineering, you can build your own scheme and publish it. I don't
  see this as a reason for not using MESH when that is valid for the
  paper under consideration.

  I must be missing something.

--

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel                  http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                              skype:thomaskrichel