Putting Scientific Information To Work (1974)

[music] In the beginning there was the word blow >> and the heard was shared. >> For the exchange of information between the early men of science depended for the most part on face-toface contact. Since there were relatively few people active in any scientific field, they could get together and talk over their work. [groaning and screaming] >> One, two, three. As the scientific community grew in size and activity all around the world, the word was put to paper. Letters that passed back and forth between scientists became the medium of information exchange. Of course, writing letters was timeconuming. To share information with two or three dozen scientists meant having to write two or three dozen letters. So, it was no wonder that scientists hailed the emergence of the printing press because now they could write a paper once and have hundreds of people read it. All that remained was for someone to collect a group of scientific papers, print a cover, and they would create a journal. And sure enough, in the middle 1600s, the first scientific journals were published. The journal de Savant in Paris, >> Cersei Sra >> and philosophical [music] transactions of the Royal Society in London. >> By Job, this is splendid indeed. >> It was a popular idea, and by the middle of the 18th century, [music] there were 10 journals being published. Through regular use of the journals, scientists found they could complete their work more quickly. You >> keep up with new developments. >> Locate colleagues [music] with similar interests. >> Right. Prevent [music] duplication of research and monitor the competition. When there were only a few journals, keeping up with new articles was easy. Even a literature search that covered several years could be made in short order from individual collections [music] of journals. But the number of journals continued to grow to hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands from most of the countries of the world. Classifying articles for retrieval [music] became slow and imprecise. To complicate things, researchers needed information from [music] many related disciplines to solve new problems. Even with abstracts and indexes, making full use of the journal literature wasn't [music] easy anymore. Keeping up with newly published articles was rapidly becoming impractical. >> Mama, and searching back even a few years through the literature was almost impossible. Things continued to get worse until 1961 when a new idea was hatched. The Institute for Scientific Information was born. The fledgling organization took a good look at the literature and at the way it was really used. It felt that with the right kind of innovation, it could deliver the right information into the right hands at the right time at minimum expense and inconvenience. The first step was to develop a practical database that encompassed a manageable percentage of the world's scientific literature. Although there are about 50,000 journals being published throughout [music] the world, the significant articles are found in only a small percentage of them. In fact, less than 1,000 scientific journals account for over 90% of the important articles in science and technology. This phenomenon is based on Bradford's law. In practical terms, this means that truly comprehensive information services can be produced rapidly and efficiently from a carefully selected portion of the world's journal literature. Another important step was to apply to this database an indexing technique that had never been used for the scientific literature called citation indexing. This technique overcomes many of the limitations of conventional indexing systems. [music] It is based on the premise that an author's reference to a previous publication indicates a subject relationship [music] between the two. These references are commonly called citations and are listed in the bibliography [music] of the work. Current publications that refer to the same previous publication usually have subject relationships with [music] each other. Applying these relationships, citation indexing draws together related items. Citation indexing is a key to the effectiveness of many of the ISI information services. From a modest beginning, the Institute for Scientific Information has grown to include a multinational network of offices, field representatives, and customers supported from a modern headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In less than [music] two decades, the institute has become one of the leading international centers for the dissemination and retrieval of scientific and technical information. [music] A professional staff of over 300 information specialists, indexers, technicians, subject specialists, computer experts, librarians, and information scientists. produces the world's most comprehensive range of scientific information services. To meet the expanding requirements of the research community and the libraries and information centers that serve it, ISI has built its database to [music] meet the needs of professionals working in such disciplines as physical, chemical, and life sciences, environmental, agricultural, and biological sciences through clinical medicine, engineering, [music] and technology to the social, behavioral, and educational sciences. The data is extracted from more than 5,000 leading scientific journals and creatively reorganized into both standardized and customized services that fit into the established patterns of information [music] use by scientists. ISI believes that the more access paths it can provide [music] to any individual item in the literature, the more certainly each researcher will be able to find what [music] he needs. To achieve this end, several indexing techniques are employed. Each item is indexed according to author, by permuted title [music] work, by author's organizational affiliation, and of course by its reference citations to serve special requirements in the chemical fields. Further refinements include indexing by structural formula, by subject terms, and by whiswessor line notation, a method that gives ISI the unique ability to locate organic compounds containing specified chemical substructures. Utilizing [music] the most advanced man machine processing techniques, a staggering total of almost a million articles a year are screened, coded, [music] and cross-indexed because of the speed and precision with which this database can be manipulated. ISI services are unparalleled in their ability to meet the total information needs of the scientific community. An important consideration for every working scientist is current awareness. Gaining immediate access to general information that is being published in the various disciplines that [music] relate to his own field of interest. One of ISI's full line of current awareness tools [music] is current contents a personal information system that provides quick easy and economical access to the journal literature. Every week, the contents pages of the leading scientific journals are extracted. Enhanced to [music] emphasize important elements. >> [music] [music] >> and reproduced in a number of discipline oriented editions. [music] Each easy to scan pocket-sized edition enables the user to examine in minutes the titles of all the articles appearing in the current issues of the journals in [music] his field. Current contents is the winner of the information industry's first hall of fame award as a landmark innovation in information services. It is now the most widely used scientific [music] information service in the world with some additions of current contents. [music] A subject index is included each week. This enables the user to immediately locate the pages containing [music] titles of direct interest to him. >> [music] [music] >> Even without access to the journals, it's possible to write for reprints of articles of interest. With every issue, an author address directory provides the author's full mailing address for each article listed. A more selective ISI current [music] awareness tool is ASCAT topics, an alerting service which automatically locates articles in the current literature [music] relevant to specific topics of interest to individual scientists. Each user simply selects the research topics he wants to [music] keep up with from a special list of hundreds of topics supplied by the institute. Every week, a printout is generated listing [music] the titles, authors, and journal citations of articles relevant to the selected topics. [music] >> [music] >> The user receives this valuable information while it is new within days [music] after original publication. As a topics incorporates citation indexing [music] in its search program, which means the user is alerted to many articles that could easily [music] be missed by conventional retrieval methods. For the researcher whose requirements [music] are highly specialized, ISI provides the unique ASCA or automatic subject citation [music] alert. This service is built upon customized, carefully constructed [music] user profiles that identify an individual's subject interest. The result is a personal computergenerated printout that is a one-of-a-kind report on relevant articles and publications of specific immediate [music] interest. For the current awareness needs of the organic chemist, ISI has developed current abstracts of chemistry and index chemists. [music] This important alerting tool is a weekly abstract service that reports [music] new organic compounds and syntheses as soon as they are announced in the literature. CAC and IC is [music] the most convenient abstract service a chemist can use and is an excellent scanning tool with its easyto read graphic abstracts and other [music] visual aids. Over 150,000 new compounds are indexed in [music] detail each year. In many types of projects, information retrieval must cover a time span in the literature of several disciplines to recover all relevant articles on a subject. For such retrospective searching, ISI has developed a full range of reference tools. One of the best known is the science citation index. Published annually since 1961, [music] the SCI is in reality the print version of the natural and physical sciences portion of the ISI database. [music] SCI permits searches that are very quick and [music] highly productive. Taking full advantage of all the indexing techniques applied to the database, SCI searches avoid the difficulties normally encountered with traditional indexes organized by subject headings. Now in use in about a thousand libraries, Science Citation Index is the only reference tool [music] that makes it possible to start with a single key publication on a subject and use citation relationships to find more recent articles on the same subject. For a long time, comprehensive searches of the social sciences journal literature were cumbersome [music] and timeconuming. Anyone who needed information was forced to work with a multitude of discipline oriented [music] indexes. ISI eliminated this problem when it introduced the social sciences citation index covering all of the disciplines of the social, [music] behavioral, and related sciences. SSCI is another portion of the ISI database that takes advantage of citation relationships [music] and ISI's multiple indexing techniques. Current abstracts of chemistry and index chemicals mentioned earlier as an important current awareness tool also takes on considerable value for retrospective searches through the index chemical quarterly and annual accumulations. Searches for organic compounds, including chemical intermediates, can be made by molecular formula, subject terms, organization, and WWesser line notation. [music] Published since 1961, [music] Index Chemicus provides access to nearly 2 million compounds and continues to grow at the rate of over 150,000 new compounds each year. In addition to these selected examples, ISI provides a continually growing family of related information services. Very often within the research community and the libraries that serve it, there are special information needs that arise. The institute has responded to these needs with a separate department created to handle such projects on an individual contract basis. These can vary from as small a task as a single hour of specific search to the preparation of special indexes for a customer's own proprietary data. Many organizations with large-scale [music] information programs find it more convenient to use the ISI database in machine readable form and utilize one or more of the institute's computer tape services. Available on a subscription [music] basis, the computer tapes are delivered at frequent regular intervals. One group of [music] tapes represents the physical and natural sciences portion of the ISI database. Another includes the social [music] and behavioral sciences portion. Index chemicus registry system tapes provide a chemical information service with a machine search capability for organic compounds. To help assure the most productive use of all tape services for selective dissemination of information as well as for retrospective search purposes, the institute has developed a complete support program. This support runs the gamut from the availability of search software through a complete formal personnel training program to installation and follow-up supervision on a complete turnkey package basis. ISI tapes have been in active use for years by a growing number of educational, industrial, and government research organizations to provide their own internal information dissemination services. Several national information centers have taken full advantage of ISI tapes. The entire range of ISI services is an important part of the national information system of Spain distributed through the Ministry of Education. The ASCA alerting service [music] and the index chemical registry system are part of a nationwide information system in Japan. ISI [music] tape systems are in use at the National Research Council in Canada. The Royal Technical Institute in Sweden, the German Institute for Medical Documentation and Information, the National Center of Scientific and Technological Information in Israel, and the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. A vital support for all users of any of the ISI information systems is Oats, the institute's original article tear sheet service. This international library service provides prompt, convenient, and economical access to hard copies of articles located by any of the ISI information systems when they are not readily available through regular library channels or when an article is needed extra fast. Within 24 hours or less, Oats article requests are filled directly from the source journals in the institute's own extensive [music] collection. ISI's user [music] oriented services meet every information need from providing a single article to turnkey delivery of a complete custom-designed information system. Information about any of these services is available from one of ISI's field [music] representatives operating from key cities around the world. These men are trained information specialists with years of experience in assisting librarians, information center managers, and individual researchers [music] to solve their information problems. Responsive to individual [music] requirements, they apply their expertise in many ways. One of them is to help subscribers to select the right combination of institute developed [music] services to meet their needs. Another is to educate the men and women who will use the selected services to apply them [music] with maximum effectiveness in supporting their research requirements and of course to follow up the use of ISI services in each installation. Not only to help assure that the service is being used effectively but to make sure that the selected service is accomplishing the job required of it. For service is an institute goal information service that can solve the growing literature handling problems of the scientist and librarian. [music] Expanded awareness, improved professional performance and achievement of research goals are attainable [music] through more effective use of published scientific information. And here ISI leads the way to putting scientific information to work. [music]