On February 25 DCRT and the NIH Library unveiled the long-awaited network access to "Science Citation Index Expanded"* for the NIH scientific community. Known as the "Web of Science," this powerful new, Web-based facility provides citation and literature searches of over 5,000 scientific journals.

Also unveiled was the DCRT-developed facility, "Porpoise," that allows NIH scientists to define profiles of search terms. Searches are then automatically done on the weekly updates of the "Science Citation Index Expanded" using the profiles defined by the scientists, and results are returned by e-mail. In addition to those automated searches, Porpoise can automate delivery of the tables of contents from journals.

While the Web of Science and Porpoise replace the literature-search services offered by DCRT via the NIH Gopher (i.e., "Search Current Contents," "Search Reference Update" and automated searches of these databases via AutoGopher), they also offer increased functionality. Users can search the scientific literature from 1987 to the present using a Web-based interface. Users can also obtain the list of cited references for each article, determine the number of times a given article is cited, and see who is citing their own research.

Give the Web of Science and Porpoise a try at http://publishorperish.nih.gov/.

* Copyright, Institute for Scientific Information