Indexing Sources
1. Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature
Launch Date: 1848
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: G.P. Putnam
Status: Historic; no longer in publication
Details: The first edition, published in 1848, was compiled by William Frederick Poole and served as an alphabetical index to subjects treated in reviews and other periodicals to which no indexes had been published.
2. Index Medicus
Launch Date: January 1879
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: National Library of Medicine (formerly Library of the Surgeon General’s Office)
Status: Print publication ceased in 2004; content continued through MEDLINE and PubMed databases
Details: Initiated by John Shaw Billings, Index Medicus was a monthly guide to current medical literature, providing access to medical literature by indexing key concepts from journals.
3. Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature
Launch Date: 1901
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: H.W. Wilson Company (now part of EBSCO Publishing)
Status: Active; available as a digital database
Details: An index of articles in selected popular periodicals published in the 20th and 21st centuries, covering a wide range of subjects.
4. Science Citation Index (SCI)
Launch Date: 1964
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now part of Clarivate Analytics
Status: Active; integrated into the Web of Science database
Details: Created by Eugene Garfield, SCI was the first multidisciplinary citation index to the scientific journal literature, indexing journals across various scientific disciplines.
5. Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP)
Launch Date: 1978
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: Thomson Reuters (now part of Clarivate Analytics)
Status: Active; includes conference proceedings, technical reports, and books
Details: A scholarly literature database indexing material pertaining to international conference proceedings titles, locations, and dates, with searchable indexing terms, references, and abstracts.
6. Indian Citation Index (ICI)
Launch Date: October 2009
Country: India
Publisher/Organization: Knowledge Foundation, in collaboration with Diva Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.
Status: Active; provides access to Indian scholarly journals
Details: A multidisciplinary Indian citation index providing full-text access to open-access journals and analytical tools for evaluating Indian research periodicals.
Abstracting Sources
1. Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA)
Launch Date: 1950
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher/Organization: Library Association (now part of CILIP)
Status: Active; covers literature in library and information science
Details: An abstracting service covering literature in library and information science, indexing articles from journals, conference papers, and books.
2. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)
Launch Date: January 1907
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: American Chemical Society
Status: Active; provides comprehensive chemical information
Details: CAS began as a volunteer effort and developed into a comprehensive source for chemical information, including abstracts of chemical literature.
3. Biological Abstracts
Launch Date: 1969
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: Biological Abstracts, Inc.
Status: Active; covers life sciences literature
Details: An abstracting service covering literature in the life sciences, indexing articles from journals, conference papers, and books.
4. Index Chemicus
Launch Date: Mid-20th century
Country: United States
Publisher/Organization: American Chemical Society
Status: Active; provides graphical abstracts of chemical compounds
Details: An abstracting service providing graphical representations of chemical compounds, summarizing chemical structures.
5. Auto-Abstracts
Launch Date: Late 20th century
Country: Global
Publisher/Organization: Various digital platforms and databases
Status: Active; utilized in various digital databases
Details: Computer-generated abstracts created using algorithms to analyze key terms and frequency within documents.