Editors' Column
Electronic Journals During the past few years, the American Chemical Society has been exploring the feasibility of making the ACS's primary journals available in electronic form. Early in 1980, a test file was established with a data base vendor (Bibliographic Retrieval Services [BRS] in Scotia, N.Y.). The file consists of approximately 1000 articles published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry during the years 1976-78. The data are the full text (except for chemical structures, tables, and some mathematical expressions), not merely bibliographic references or other portions of the articles. This primary journal file is a byproduct of the Society's computercontrolled photocomposition process at Chemical Abstracts Service in Columbus, Ohio. All of the ACS's primary journals, including the research papers in A N A L Y T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y ,
are produced via this system. After a manuscript has been through peer review and has been accepted for publication, it is keyboarded into machine-readable form. The manuscript data are manipulated algorithmically to produce author galleys and finally the printed journal issues. After completion of the photocomposition process for a specific journal issue, the data are archived on magnetic tape and kept for future use . . . one of these uses being to create an electronic journal form. The data on the archival tapes just described were sent to BRS for creation of the test file. The test file may be accessed in the U.S. and many foreign countries by using ordinary telephones, a modem, and a terminal (total purchase price $1200-1500 or leasing at about $100 per month). Preliminary evaluation of the test file by a few volunteers from 11 different organizations has shown that online access of a primary journal data
base promises to be an exceptionally powerful tool. Every word in a manuscript, except for such words as "a," "the," " o f (72 in all), is indexed and thus searchable. Here are two simple illustrative examples: (1) Searching for the two terms "methotrexate" AND "tripeptide" shows there are only two articles in the file containing both words. The specific location of the terms can be displayed in order to retrieve only those portions of text of direct interest. The bibliographic data, titles, authors, authors' affiliations, abstract, references, and full text, if desired, can be displayed upon command. For example, in one of the articles, one or the other term appears in the title and abstract, and in the first, second, third, sixth, and eighth paragraphs. Moreover, the specific sentences and location within each sentence are given for each search term. (2) Searching for terms can be limited to the title, abstract, authors' names, experimental section (if defined), etc. Moreover, searching for multiple terms can be limited to those that occur within an article, paragraph, sentence or those that are adjacent to one another. For example, searching for the terms "enzyme" AND "receptor" shows that there are 64 articles that contain both terms somewhere within an article; if the search logic is expressed as ''enzyme" SAME "receptor," which requires that the terms occur in the same paragraph, only 28 articles are retrieved. Using the logic "enzyme" WITH "receptor" produces 14 articles, and in this case, the two terms must occur within the same sentence. Searching "enzyme" ADJ "receptor" and "receptor"ADJ "enzyme" affords three and one articles, respectively. When linking terms with the operator ADJ, the terms must be adjacent to one another
in the order given. Thus users have a great deal of flexibility in searching. Consideration is being given to establishing a greatly expanded test file in 1981. The new test file, which would include A N A L Y T I C A L C H E M I S TRY as well as the other 15 ACS primary journals, would consist of the full text for journals published in 1980 plus biweekly additions during 1981. Thus analytical chemists would be able to search for such examples as: • papers that include the terms ''Portland," "cement," and "potassium" in the same paragraph and limited to the experimental section of articles (searching for experimental details on the determination of potassium in Portland cement); • papers in which the terms "electrode," "bacteria," and "ammonia" appear in the same paragraph within an article; • articles of which Theodore Kuwana is an author, or papers that cite Kuwana's works; • research papers in which the financial support of the U.S. National Science Foundation is acknowledged; • articles by authors at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. The purpose of this experimental program is to make all the ACS's primary journals available on-line within a few years on a cost-effective basis. Work is in progress to eventually include the graphic data (tables, figures, structures, etc.), which are not now part of the machine-readable file. Anyone interested in accessing the current file or that being considered for 1981 should contact either Lorrin R. Garson or Seldon W. Terrant, Research & Development, Books & Journals Division, American Chemical Society, 1155 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C.20036. Lorrin Garson
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 52, NO. 13, NOVEMBER 1980 ·
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