American Chemical Society
Teaching Chemical Information:
Tips and Techniques
— June 1997 —
Teaching Science Citation Index
Why search (and teach) SCI? Four main reasons:
- Find articles on a subject — based on words in article titles in journals
covered by SCI.
- Does not do extensive indexing CA does.
- Useful to compare and contrast a new index/information source with one students already know.
- Locate articles by authors.
- Often appears more quickly than in CA.
- Covers Abstracts of Papers Presented at ACS Meetings, which CA only began in 1996.
- Locate articles that have cited, in their footnotes, a given article after it was
published (i.e. Citation searching).
- Value of “citation searching”:
- This is an excellent and unique way to extend a search forward in time.
- Determine who has done research on a topic since publication of a specific paper.
- Has this method been improved?
Select a seminal article, or one that is especially useful. Search on the first author, only. Articles as old as 40 years are still cited — ex. articles by Einstein, Linus Pauling (bonds, Vitamin C, etc.) are still cited in 1995).
- Value of “citation searching”:
- Locate “related” articles in CD-ROM and some online versions.
“Related” articles share the same footnotes, so are likely to be on the
same topic.
- Also, identify:
- Review articles
- Author’s address
- Also, identify:
Because SCI covers approximately 3,000 of the most important journals in all science, engineering, math, and some medical areas, it is an excellent source for interdisciplinary topics.
Teaching technique:
- Students understand citation searching more readily if a sample article of interest to them is selected. Bring article to class and comment on the technique of following up on footnotes. Then, by checking this article as a Cited Article, can locate more recent articles on that topic.
- Sample practice questions are attached.