EUGENEGARFIELD
IS1 Services in the Design of Small-1Jser Systems* EUGENE GARFIELD
Institute for Scientific information, 325 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Received M a y 18, 1966 The Institute for Scientific information (ISI) provides several services that are useful to the small information groups who constitute the majority of 19’s patrons. The relationship between 19’s existing and future large-scale information systems and “small” user systems is stressed. Services covered include Current Contenfs ( C C ) ,Original Article Tear Sheets (OATS), lndex Chemicus ( I C ) , Automatic Subject Citation Alert (ASCA), and the IS1 Search Service.
T h e designation “small user” was probably conjured up for this symposium to characterize the lone information officer or librarian in a small organization who is responsible for retrieval and dissemination of information. both currently and retrospectively. This would generally include the organization’s special files of information indexed according to its own special needs and approaches to research and development. M y concept of the small user is not limited primarily to the one-man information shop in many commercial organizations, but also includes thousands of individual users in academic and nonprofit research Organizations where scientists have a consistent and diligent interest in keeping up with the literature, conducting searches, and maintaining special files, particularly reprint collections and collections of specialized data. Indeed. these small users are the specialized information centers of which so much was said in the Weinberg report ( I ) . Consequently, m y enthusiasm for this subject is due t o the fact that IS1 derives the majority of its income from small users, a fact which may come as a surprise t o many of our “large” users. IS1 provides a t least 10 different services, each of which is in some way related t o the other. I shall treat them
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$PAC!, tltCIRONlC 8 PHYSlCN SCIENCLS “ c “ d n l iun I n 6 l O p i I L C n m r l n
Figure 1 . Cover page of Current Contents o f Cherriical, Pharmaco-Medical and life Sciences. 164
in their historical order and then mention a few new services. The “old” stand-by, Current Contents o f Chemical. Pharmato-Medica/ and L i f e Sciences (Figure 1) is used by hundreds of technical information officers, among other reasons. as the simplest and most economical solution to the journal routing problem. Over 10 years ago, such large organizations as Lederle and Merck realized the high cost of routing large numbers of journals. Though CC has not eliminated journal routing. it has cut it down to meaningful proportions and in fact, actually increased the use of journals. Kot a single journal. t o my knowledge, has had a loss of circulation through CC coverage. CC circulation continues to grow, and its readers seem t o have an insatiable appetite for covering new journals. This does not appear to affect the process we traditionally call “browsing.” People like to read headlines. But there are technical information officers who scan each and every title in CC because there are fields of interest for which there are titles which cannot be reasonably anticipated by word. citation. or other indexing systems. Current Contents of Space, Electronic and Physical Sciences (Figure 2) is used by many more small science and engineering companies than is the Life Sciences Edition. The reason for this is the large number of firms in these fields, often without good library facilities. Since all IS1 services are backed u p by an Original Article Tear Sheet service (OATS), this makes CC a g3od invest-
Figure 2. Cover page of Current Contents of Space, Electronic and Physical Sciences.
Figure 3. Sample OATS request card showing use of stamp for payment. JOURNAL OF
CHEMICAL DOCUMENTATION
IS1 SERVICES IN
THE
DESIGNOF SMALL-VSER SYSTEMS mary publication. I C ' s graphical abstracting approach can save the user much of the time required t o read or scan a conventional abstract. IC's selectivity and compactness are considered a virtue by most users. Small users rarely measure the time and cost of a search for a particular compound in a molecular formula index. A search in I C is rapid. We also offer I C custom searches through files of 600,000 compounds for $25 for the first hour, and $10 per hour for each succeeding hour. Many small users use IC's registry numbers as a unique means of identifying compounds in their files and for retrieving I C abstracts. Others have obtained our permission t o prepare special selective bulletins-- e g . . all abstracts covering alkaloids---and to reporduce the abstracts on 5" x 8" cards for filing by the lab man a t his own desk (Figure 5). Just as CL' is sometimes used in lieu of routing over 5600 different journal issues per year, I C is sometimes used in chemical research organizations for current awareness in lieu of scanning journals. Extra copies of I C are charged a t essentially the cost of printing. Extensive analysis (2) has shown that about 100 chemical journals, out of more than 1000 journals screened by I C . account for 985 of the reports of new chemical compounds. But even this "small," select group df journals cannot be routed conveniently t o an individual for screening, or even to the one-man t.echnica1 information department which can afford to purchase these journals. A major activity of the small technical information department is selective dissemination of information. This is a service much appreciated by busy individuals in research. development, and marketing. Here again. ISI's services to the small user are unique. In the Automatic Subject Citation Alert IASCA) system ( 3I . each scientist or organization prepares a profile of interests as shown
ment for a small firm (Figure 3). However, we do not limit OATS service to CC customers, most of whom rely on their own libraries or write to authors for reprints anyhow. Why should a "small" user buy Index Chernicits (Figure -I)? The reason he b u : ~ sany seemingly expensive service is simple-he could n3t obtain similar information at a comparable cost in time. energy, or money. I t is difficult to place a monetary value on timeliness. I C publishes detailed abstracts. together with the corresponding indexes, a n average of seven weeks after appearance of pri-
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EUGENEGARFIELD scientists. However, this is not as easy to monitor as one would like to believe. IS1 also provides magnetic tapes of its various files. The average small user probably cannot afford these tapes, which cost from $5000 per year upwards. However, one or two "small users" plan to use these tapes for certain sociological and historical studies that would otherwise be impossible without these files. I n these cases, the tapes provide the raw data for the studies. The new IS1 Search Service is a boon to the small user whose budget cannot support acquisition of tapes or even the printed volumes of the Science Citation Index. He could make a comparable search a t any public library t h a t subscribes to SCI. However, there are certain data files available exclusively a t ISI, such as our 1960 file. I n the IS1 Search Service the client supplies us with one or more starting references (Figure 10). We search the SCI files according to his instructions a t the same rates as for I C custom searches. We send several types of 3" x 5" cards in response to a request (Figure 11). When the client is not familiar with the SCI system, we will devote a portion of the search time to obtaining one or two starting references. With this service also, the client has the option to receive tear sheets automatically a t $2 per tear sheet, or he can send in an OATS card. As the volume of these searches increases, we will
in Figure 6. The profile is used in the ASCA computer system to select, on a weekly basis, the pertinent literature currently appearing in over 1400 journals which publish about 250,000 items per year. Naturally the leading chemical journals are included. I n special circumstances, it may be desirable to construct a joint profile. I n such cases, the staff information scientist prepares the profile and codes each question so t h a t the weekly report indicates for whom each citation is intended (Figure 7). Thus the information manager can quickly screen the weekly ASCA report and use the second copy he receives to alert individuals to pertinent items. He can use the back of the report (Figure 8) to order tear sheets from ISI, a n d / o r add new search terms to the profile. An optional modification of ASCA is ASCAMATIC, which includes tear sheets sent automatically together with the ASCA report. ASCAMATIC saves the task and delay of ordering tear sheets, interlibrary loans, or the time and cost of making Xerox copies. I n the near future, ASCA will accept word profiles as well as citation profiles. This new search capability is now being tested with selected small users and will be reported separately. An important ASCA profile question which is frequently handled by the information officer is the corporate or organization question (Figure 9). Many find it useful to enter the name of their own organization. One might think they could get such information from their own j S C , i ,ACCOUST 8-
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