Citation searching versus traditional literature searching?

Abstract

The author, President of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia, and his staff members presented detailed information on the methods and services of the Institute to a Seminar organized by the Hungarian Central Technical Library and Documentation Centre in cooperation with the Federation of Technical and Scientific Societies, and the Computing and Cybernetic Section of the Hungarian Chemical Society, held from 18 to 19 November 1976 in Budapest.
The article summarizes the theoretical and practical basis of citation analysis and indicates its application for solving various types of problems. Dr. Garfield describes in details the scope, the structure and the contents of the Science Citation Index (SCI) published stnce 1964 and its various parts. Citation indexing reduces considerably the time and effort needed for literature searching as compared to traditional searching toois and methods. The article demonstrates the capability and flexibility of citation searching by several examples and illustrates with figures the wide range of applicability of SCI.