Page 87 - DLIS105_REFERENCE_SOURCES_AND_SERVICES

Reference Sources and Services

Notes Current Contents (CC)

Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia, USA publishes Current Contents (CC), a current
awareness database that provides information in the fields of science, social science, technology, and
arts and humanities. Published weekly in seven editions, it covers the contents from the world’s
scholarly journals. CC displays the tables of contents from more than 7,400 journals and 2,000 books,
and conference proceedings, and provides complete bibliographic data for every item covered. NCSI
subscribes for Current Contents in four subject categories: Agriculture; Biology & Environmental
Science; Engineering, Computing & Technology; Life Sciences and Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
ISI also publishes the JCR, which provides a systematic and objective means of determining the
relative importance of journals within their subject categories. Five primary data fields with sort and
filter options are provided in the JCR database: Total Cites (number of times the journal has been
cited in a year), Impact Factor (frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in
a particular year), Immediacy Index (how quickly the average article in a specific journal is cited),
Articles (number of articles published in the year), Cited Half life (reflects the ongoing use of a journal).

Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC)

ETOC is a service provided by NCSI for the IISc community, using the latest CC issues, which are
downloaded via the Internet using FTP. It delivers every week, by e-mail, content pages along with
abstracts of up to ten journals identified by the user in advance. The ETOC users can enroll for the
service thorough the Web by selecting ten journals of choice. The enrollment form is received through
e-mail and a copy is sent to the user for confirmation. A profile is created for the user by assigning a
profile number. The enrollment form indicates the availability of the journals in IISc library and also
the Impact Factor of the Journal obtained from the JCR database. The records from CC issues are
downloaded using ‘CCWin’, a programme supplied by ISI. This downloaded file is transferred to a
Linux machine and processed using C Programmes, which have been developed in-house. Since,
there are about 210 users, a batch processing of the profiles is done by creating inverted files for the
journals. Then they are compared with the profiles of the users and the output is obtained. The output
is mailed to the users. The users can modify their profiles at the same website.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:
4. Information is the life-blood of:
(a) Work (b) Research work
(c) Information (d) Need.
5. National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science (IISc),
established in:
(a) 1973 (b) 1963
(c) 1983 (d) 1988.

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