Multilingual Electronic Resources for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies  Tags: slavic east_european research_methods russian technology  

The Citation Indexes do not consistently use the Library of Congress transliteration system for Russian, i.e., "Gryakolova", not "Griakolova", but "Russkaia literatura", not "Russkaya literatura".

It is difficult to determine how many items in a particular language are indexed in the Citation Indexes.  The Citation Indexes do, however, duplicate the material indexed in another Thompson-ISI database, Current Contents.  As of June 4th, 2008, Current Contents included citations to articles in the following Slavic & East European languages (number of articles cited is in parentheses):

• Russian (114,959)
• Czech (11,752)
• Polish (5,786)
• Slovak (5,308)
• Hungarian (3,608)
• Romanian (2,915)
• Croatian (761)
• Slovenian (367)
• Ukrainian (232)
• Latvian (187)
• Bulgarian (40)
• Serbian (16)
• Serbo-Croatian (13)

Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index can be searched individually, but are presented by the vendor as part of their "Web of Science" package, which also includes a citation index for the natural sciences. Web of Science, in turn, is packaged with a number of other databases by default when these resources are first accessed. This package is accessible here; click on the "Select a Database" or "Web of Science" tabs to avoid searching the entire package.

• "Cited reference searching allows you to navigate forward, backward, and through the journal literature to uncover information relevant to your research."
• "Citation indexing uses the cited references in published articles as index terms. It exploits the formal linkages between papers established by the authors themselves."
• Citations can be followed and citation patterns analyzed using a variety of tools.
• Part of the ISI Web of Science, which focuses primarily on materials in the hard sciences
• "Social Sciences Citation Index® – to 1956
  Fully indexes over 1,950 journals across 50
  social science disciplines, as well as 3,500 of the
  world’s leading scientific and technical journals"
• "Arts & Humanities Citation Index® –to 1975
  Fully indexes over 1,160 arts and humanities
  journals, as well as selected items from over
  6,000 scientific and social sciences journals"

Retrospective coverage for the arts & humanities has been extended back to 1975, and for the social sciences back to 1970 (from 1980 when this guide was first created). Other institutions may have purchased access to additional retrospective material.

Articles are only included if the author or publisher provides English-language titles, abstracts and keywords -- i.e., out of millions of records, only 58,015 are in Russian, and many of these are from non-Russian journals.

As of mid-2008, cited reference searching through these databases for materials in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian languages is obviously far from comprehensive. Cited reference searching for materials in English about the region will cover more sources, but since the Citation Indexes are general databases with no particular emphasis on Eastern Europe and the CIS, these results must also not be considered to be comprehensive.

A list of all journals indexed in the Citation Indexes begins at http://images.isiknowledge.com/help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html.

For more on cited reference searching, visit http://www.brainshark.com/brainshark/vu/view.asp?pi=34671484.

For an excellent guide to the Web of Science prepared by the University of Illinois' Biotechnology Librarian, see http://www.library.uiuc.edu/biotech/Flyer_Web_Of_Science.pdf.

The Citation Indexes can be used to find out how many times (and where and by whom) a particular article has been cited, or to find out what other articles have cited the same sources as the article in question. For an example of the latter type of search, click (and then click again) on the image at right. A few of the many articles in the Citation Indexes that cite some of the same sources as S. Ashwin's "Gender solidarity against economic hardships? - Impact of the Soviet heritage" (i.e., "Гендерная солидарность против экономических трудностей? - Влияние советского наследия," translated by N.V. Romanovskii, which appeared in Социологические исследования, 2006:4, 57-68) are listed here.