Science Citation Index: The Paper Form

When conducting a literature search, you can look backward in time from a published paper by using the paper's footnotes as a bibliography. A citation index allows you to look forward in time from a published paper. A citation index contains listings of works which have cited previous works. The major assumption made by a citation index is that all authors who cite a given paper in subsequent years do so because they are interested in the same subject.

See also:
Cited Reference Searching: A Primer
What are Citation Indexes and What are their Benefits?

The Science Citation Index (SCI) can be used for both subject searching and citation searching as demonstrated by the general search patterns below.

Citation Searching

Suppose that you are interested in the synthesis of insect pheromones. You have read a review published by John Katzenellenbogen in Science (1976) 194, 139-48, and you want to know if anyone has extended the research in this area. Science Citation Index (SCI) is the resource to use.

Each year's volumes of SCI are a different color. A volume consists of a Source Index, a Citation Index, a Permuterm Index and Journal Citation Reports. Using the Citation Index for the year the article was published or any subsequent year, look up the author. An author may have several different articles listed under his/her name. A list of authors who have cited the article follows the reference. THe following example is from the 1975-79 collective Citation Index:

Thus, Katzenellenbogen's 1976 article in Science was cited by R. Baker in 1977, by R.D. Clark in 1979, by W.L. Dowling in 1977, etc. The first citation listed, the article by Baker, is indicated to be a review article. A more complete bibliographic reference can be obtained from the Source Index.

SCI is a great aid to following the progress of a research topic in the sciences. However, there are a few things you must realize when using it. Remember that the assumption upon which SCI is based is if B cites A, the A and B are interested in the same topic. In practice this may not be true. B's paper may turn out to be only of peripheral interest to you. For example, A and B may only share a common interest in a laboratory methods. Errors result in SCI because authosrs sometimes make errors in their bibliographic citations.

SCI has a set of conventions used in listing names in the Source Index and the Citation Index. In the Citation Index, the last name of a cited author is restricted to 15 characters. If the last name exceeds 15 characters, a period is used to truncate the name after the fourteenth character. For citing authors, truncation occurs after the eighth character. Compound names are fused by dropping the hyphen. Articles such as van, Von, de La, Di, etc preceeding the are also fused. Anonymous cited works follow the letter Z in the Citation Index and are arranged by abbreviated journal title.

See also:
Frequently Asked Questions about Citation Indexes
The Concept of Citation Indexing: A Unique & Innovative Tool for Navigating the Research Literature
Where Was This Paper Cited?
Tayloring The Search

Subject Searching

Every article, letter to the editor, review, or correction notice becomes a source item in SCI and gets a Permuterm Subject Index entry. In the Permuterm Subject Index, all significant words in the title of a source item are paired with every other significant title word which is not on the stop list. The stop list contains very frequently occurring short words which are not included in a database. "Of" and "the" are examples of stop words. Other terms are given keyword primary entries (the main alphabetical entries) and are paired with all other keywords in the title. Certain terms such as methods, analysis, preparation, etc. are considered semi-stop words and are used only as co-terms -- the words paired with the primary keywords. The Permuterm Subjects Index is basically a keyword subject index to the source items which have appeared in a given time period in the source journals covered annually by SCI.

The Permuterm Subject Index only lists the name of the author and the year of the publication for a given keyword. To find the full bibliographic citation, the source Index is used. The following example illustrates the use of the Permuterm Subject Index to find an article in the Source Index.

View a Citation Index Graphic
View a Source Index Graphic
View a Permuterm Subject Index Graphic

Direct suggestions, comments, and questions about this page to Arlene Courtney, courtna@wou.edu.
Last Modified February 2, 1998