Accessing Electronic Journals Chemical Abstracts

INSPEC Science Citation Index

Accessing Electronic Journals

Most electronic journal subscriptions are authorized by IP address.  For off-campus users, Lehigh has a Proxy Server.  (Almost) all of Lehigh's electronic journals are linked directly from ASA, the online catalog.  The exceptions require individual IDs/passwords; the ASA link routes users to a page with the appropriate information and link.
 
 

Method 1 (the easiest)  Access the Lehigh University Web page Click on Libraries on the top menu Click on ASA under the Online Catalogs menu Enter the title of the journal  in the Search for box and click on Journal Titles Click on the title in the Browse Results list Click on the link after Electronic access

Example 1 Find  Nelliappan, V; El-Aasser, M S; Klein, A; Daniels, E S;  Roberts, J E; Pearson, R A.  Effect of the Core/Shell Latex Particle Interphase on the Mechanical Behavior of Rubber-Toughened Poly(methylmethacrylate). Journal of Applied Polymer Science 1997 65, 581.  Follow the steps at left When journal page appears, scroll to volume 65 Click on volume 65, issue 3 Click on Abstract or PDF Note that the Abstract has links to "Find other articles like this" and "Find articles written by any of the authors" More recent issues have html text articles, with outlines and links to figures and citations

Chemical Abstracts is one of the world's premier abstracting services.  It covers over 16,000 publications (journals, conferences, technical reports, dissertations, patents) in many languages and many disciplines.  Chemistry predominates, but biology, medicine, engineering disciplines are also well covered.  It is a highly structured database (the "user manual" itself is two thick volumes), with author, keyword, subject term, chemical name, chemical structure, formula, registry number, and patent indexes.  To properly use it takes years of practice, which discourages many users, to the point where they don't even bother to try.  Since this leads to poor research, a number of solutions have been created.  One of those is simply to make it an electronic service; another is to provide an array of interfaces.  Lehigh has
 
 

Format	Dates	Coverage	Access
Paper	1907-1999	All types of publications	Open
Electronic, text-based (Student Edition)	1967 to date	Selected journals and dissertations	Lehigh Open
Electronic, text and graphics (SciFinder Scholar)	1967 to date	All types of publications	Lehigh Open
Electronic, text-based (STN)	1967 to date	All types of publications, plus ephemera	Lehigh Consultation

INSPEC is the premier database for physics, electrical/electronics, and computer science/engineering.  There is a good deal of overlap in publication coverage between Chemical Abstracts and INSPEC, but the treatment is different.  Indexing terminology is the most obvious difference, but there is also more emphasis on specific property data in INSPEC than in CA.

The SCI is an entirely different kind of literature indexing service.  Most services take a subject approach; SCI chases footnotes.  The premise behind the SCI is the good "seed" paper.  Researchers find a good paper on their topic, then trace the references in  that paper to other relevant publications, then trace the references in those publications...  The flaw with that approach is that it always leads to earlier material, which eventually becomes too old to be useful.  The SCI provides a system for tracing footnotes into the future.  Unlike other indexing services, the older years of SCI are often just a useful as the current ones.  Lehigh has the SCI in paper from 1955-1995 and on CD-ROM from 1991 to date. Both are only available in the Fairchild/Martindale Library (main floor). The search techniques described here are specific to the CD-ROM version, but the technique is the same for the paper volumes.

For assistance accessing any of these services, contact Sharon Siegler (sls7@lehigh.edu or 610-758-3068)

Last Updated: 1/22/00  slms