Stanford University Libraries

Science Citation Index: Description

  • Science Citation Index is a publication of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI).
  • Founded in 1964, by Eugene Garfield.
  • Covers all of science and technology; ISI publishes similar indexes for social sciences and arts & humanities, as well as specialized science indexes.

Features of Science Citation Index

Selective Coverage

  • SCI does not attempt to cover all publications in the sciences. Its coverage is limited to about 3600 journals, plus some books and conference proceedings.
  • Journals are selected based on citation statistics — “impact factor.”
  • This approach indexes the most important journals, but can leave gaps, especially in new areas of research.

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 and keywords for greater subject access.

Citation Searching

  • Eugene Garfield took the concept of citation searching from legal literature and applied it to the sciences.
  • If Paper A cites Paper B, then it shares some subject matter with Paper B.
  • Allows you to trace research forward from a given paper.
  • Avoids the limitations of subject terms.

Chronological Coverage

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

Components of Print SCI — Source Index

  • 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.
  • Full entries are given only under the first author’s name, with cross-references from the other authors.

Source Index

  • 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

Source Index

  • 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  87
---------------------------------------------------------
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 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 info is given, for citing article 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 Examples

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 cited (1st) author and/or full cited reference.
  • Online versions 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

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

  • Author
  • Title (words in the title; the default search)
  • Citation
  • Addresses (words in the author addresses)
  • Journal (abbreviated title, or full)
  • 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 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.” Results: Displaying. Printing, Downloading 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.

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