Stanford University Libraries

Chemical Literature (Chem 184/284)
University of California at Santa Barbara

Lecture 8: Science Citation Index

Science Citation Index

Science Citation Index is a publication of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), founded in 1958 by Dr. Eugene Garfield. SCI, which began publication in 1964, indexes the journal literature for all of science and technology. ISI also publishes similar indexes for the social sciences and arts & humanities, as well as specialized science indexes.

Features of Science Citation Index — Selective Coverage

Science Citation Index does not attempt to cover all publications in the sciences. Its coverage is limited to about 3600 journals, plus some books and conference proceedings. (The online and Web versions of the database have somewhat larger coverage.)

Journals are selected based on their citation statistics; specifically their “impact factor”. Impact factor is defined by the number of times papers published in that journal in a specified time period are cited in a specified time period, divided by the number of papers. Only journals with impact factors above a certain level, varying with the journal field, are indexed.

This approach indexes the most important journals, but can leave gaps, especially in new areas of research.

Features of Science Citation Index — Automated Indexing

ISI has automated its indexing process to a large extent. This speeds up processing of documents, but limits its depth. SCI contains no subject indexing as such, though some electronic forms add author abstracts and keywords for greater subject access.

This means that for keyword subject searching, SCI will generally be at most a second choice compared to a more specific subject-oriented index.

Features of Science Citation Index — Citation Searching

Eugene Garfield took the concept of citation searching from legal literature and applied it to the sciences. The basic concept is: If Paper A cites Paper B, then it shares some subject matter with Paper B. Paper A’s bibliography allows you to trace the citation chain backward to Paper B. Citation indexing allows you to look up Paper B as a search term and find papers (like Paper A) which cite it.

Thus, citation indexing uniquely allows you to trace research forward in time from a given paper. This approach is complementary to classic subject searching, and, importantly, avoids the limitations of subject terminology, which can vary from author to author.

For further discussion of citation indexing, see ISI’s explanation of citation searching at http://www.isinet.com/prodserv/citation/citindhp.html#whatis or for an in-depth look at a variety of applications of the technique, see a series of essays by Dr. Eugene Garfield at http://www.isinet.com/essays/intro.html.

Features of Science Citation Index — Chronological Coverage

  • Print coverage began in 1964, but retrospective sets covering 1945–54 and 1955–64 have been added.
  • Online and Web SCI go back only to 1974 and CD-ROM SCI goes back to 1980.
  • Print is updated bimonthly, with annual and five year cumulations. Online and Web versions are updated weekly; CD-ROM’s quarterly.

Components of Print SCI

Source Index

Print SCI’s Source Index corresponds to the author index.

  • The Source Index contains the full bibliographic record for the documents indexed—the other parts of SCI refer back to the Source Index.
  • Note that full entries are given only under the first author’s name, with cross-references from the other authors.
  • Author names are listed by last name and initials ONLY. This can cause confusion with common last names.
  • Handling of compound names and names transliterated from other alphabets is not always consistent.
  • Journal names are highly abbreviated, using ISI’s own abbreviations.
Source Index Example
CHAUDHARY BN
     UV SPECTRAL STUDIES OF A FEW NUCLEAR SUBSTITUTED PHENOTHIAZINES
          ANN NUC SCI  90(4):339-343    87     4R
          LOHIA COLL CHEM LABS, CHURU, INDIA
CHEKUNOV AV
     KUCHMA VG--ABYSSAL ASYMMETRY OF…
CHENG LC
     see ROGUS EM     BIOC BIOP A  454   347   87
  • The Source Index also includes a Corporate Index, listing articles by the company or institution at which they were produced.
  • The primary index is geographic, arranged by state or country, then city, then institution.
  • The Corporate Name index refers you to the city of the institution so you can cross back to the Geographic Index.
  • Corporate indexing can be haphazard.
Corporate Index Example
MARYLAND
     GREENBELT
          NASA
               GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
               AIKEN AG       APPL OPTICS   21   2421   87
               BOPP BW        ASTRONOM J   87   1035   8
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NASA
     MARYLAND    GREENBELT
     VIRGINIA         HAMPTON
Permuterm Subject Index
  • SCI’s subject index indexes only words from the title of the article.
  • If a given term appears in several documents, then co-terms from the titles are listed below to subdivide the main heading. Very common or uninformative terms may not appear as primary terms, but may be used as co-terms.
  • Terms which frequently go together may be listed as a hyphenated phrase, e.g. amino-acid or magnetic-resonance.
  • Some terms have “see” or “see also” references to related terms.
  • Remember that you must consider all alternate forms of a terms and synonyms for thorough searching.
Permuterm Subject Examples
ACETYLENEDICARBOX.
     ->RODIONOV.LS
ACONITASE
     ACTIVITY---->SUZUKI T
             ---->WRIGHT JA
     BACILLUS---->AGRAWAL PK
ACOUSTIC
     sa ION-ACOUSTIC
     sa SOUND
     ANIMAL-MOD-->CHINN J
Citation Index
  • Cited articles are listed by the name of the first author only. Then, beneath that, by year, then cited journal, volume and page.
  • Multiple articles citing the same paper are listed alphabetically by author’s name.
  • Minimal information is given; for the citing article’s title, go to the Source Index.
  • Note that the cited reference appears as in the original article. If the citing author botched the citation, SCI will reproduce the mistake.
  • “In press” publications appear before specific cited papers.
  • “Anonymous” publications are grouped together.
Citation Index Example
ANSELIN F
     **IN PRESS
          CANTOR B      ACT METALL      24  845   89
     63  CR HEBDOMAD SE ACAD    256   2616
          PEZAT M       J SOL ST CHEM   18   381   89
     75 T AM NUCL SOC                   20
          BLANCHAR.P   T AM NUCL S      23   151   89
          WAGNER C   METALL T-B   7    485   89

Tips for Effective Citation Searching

  • Select a good starting point. Remember that there is a time lag between when a publication appears, when authors begin to cite it, and when their papers appear.
  • Select a tightly focused paper. Citations of broad review articles may not be relevant.
  • Print and CD-ROM only allow searching by the first cited author and/or full cited reference. Online and Web versions may allow searching by other combinations (cited journal) and, in some cases, let you work around the “first author” problem.

Science Citation Index on CD

  • A CD-ROM version of SCI is available for 1980–present.
  • Each disc covers one year; discs may only be searched one at a time.
  • For recent years a version is available with abstracts and author keywords. UCSB does not own that version.

Using the SCI CD-ROM (DOS Version)

First, select the field which you wish to search, by pressing Alt-F

  • Author
  • Title (words in the title; the default search)
  • Citation
  • Address (words in the author addresses)
  • Journal (abbreviated title, or full title)
  • Set (used to combine searches in different fields)
  • Author Searching
    • As a rule, after selecting the Author field, use Alt-D (for “dictionary”) to browse the list of author names.
    • When the initial list appears, begin typing the author’s last name. A box will appear. After typing the name, press ENTER, and the list will jump to the vicinity of the author’s name.
    • Locate the author, highlight, and press ENTER.
  • Title Searching
    • As with CC on MELVYL, the title is the only source of subject terms.
    • Terms may be combined with AND, OR, NOT. Generally, there is no proximity searching.
    • SCI-CD uses the asterisk * as its truncation symbol.
  • Journal and Address Searching
    • Use Alt-D with journal searching, especially abbreviated titles.
    • Addresses are highly abbreviated. You may want to use Alt-D to check for possible abbreviations.
  • Citation Searching
    • ALWAYS use Alt-D to scan the lists for the citation(s) you need. Variants in how articles are cited are too common to risk entering the citation directly, and the SCI-CD format for cited references is non-intuitive.
    • Remember, as with print, only first authors are used, and citations are as they appear in the source paper.
  • Results: Displaying, Printing, Downloading
    • When you have an answer set, press the F4 function key. You may choose to display either “full records” or “title list”.
    • If you want to print or download, use the Collect option to tag the records you want. At any time, you can display, print or download your “collection”.
    • Author addresses may be displayed by pressing A.
    • The paper’s cited references may be displayed by pressing R. You may select items from the list of cited references and search them. However, the screen remains on the current display until you go back to the Search screen (F3) to see the new search.
  • Related Records — a novel approach to subject searching
    • The CD version of SCI introduced the notion of Related Record searching.
    • A Related record is any record which shares at least one cited reference with the original source record. The more shared references, the more closely related the records are—an extension of the notion of citation searching to track a subject area.
    • The CD links each record to up to 20 other related records on the same disc, ranked by number of shared references relative to the total number of references.
    • From the record display, press R to see its related records. You may repeat R up to five levels deep.
    • Collect comes in very handy in Related Record searching.

Web of Science

  • The Web of Science is ISI’s new Web-based interface to its citation databases.
  • Important features:
    • Search (potentially) all three ISI Citation Databases simultaneously, over all their years of electronic coverage.
    • Use hyperlinks between records to navigate forward, backward or through the research literature using the unique links made possible only with citation data.
    • Perform Related Records searches over the entire database at once.
    • Link to original article information when a cited reference of interest is found (for those original articles covered by the database)
    • Conduct cited reference searches on primary and secondary authors (for those references covered by the database)
    • Receive weekly updates to “times-cited” information
    • Link to electronic journals for recent articles.
  • This service is available by institutional subscription only at this time.

This document was created by Chuck Huber (huber@library.ucsb.edu).

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