National Indexing and Abstracting
Services for Indian S&T Journals: A
Study
By
Dhiman Mondal
M.Phil. Student
University of Calcutta
Dept. of Library & Information Science
West Bengal.
E-mail: dhiman.bon@gmail.com
Introduction
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In India, every year a huge amount of money has been spent for
R&D infrastructure in S&T and as a result wide range of
primary literatures are coming out from this discipline.
Researchers use journals to provide a forum for the scientific
community to share their research findings, inventions and also
to open new vistas for further research.
Today, in the age of information explosion, journal is increasing
day by day and every year a vast amount of information is
published in the journals by the researchers.
Due to the growth in size and complexity of recorded
knowledge, a need has been felt to list the records of human
communication systematically by means of producing subject
bibliographies, indexing and abstracting tools etc.
Introduction
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Indexing and abstracting work plays significant role in
achieving bibliographical control over primary published
literatures.
Indexing and abstracting journals mean by which the vast
amount of scattered information contained in journals can be
indexed and summarized for quick access to information.
The purpose of such a control over journal literature is that no
journal title should be out of reach.
Indexing and Abstracting Services of
Journals
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Indexing and abstracting of journals is an access tool which
lists the title of the journal articles with bibliographical details
arranged systematically.
Indexing of journals compile titles of journals articles
regularly and arranged it user friendly order so that users can
locate the sources of the document easily and quickly.
Abstracting journals not only list the bibliographical details
but also provide summary of the documents.
Indexing and Abstracting Services of
Journals
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In 1907, Chemical Abstracts was published as a first weekly
indexing and abstracting journal for world’s chemistry related
literature. Whereas, Indian Science Abstract (ISA) started
publishing as first Indian S&T journals index in 1935.
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In 1963, Eugene Garfield initiated the first machine generated
multidisciplinary citation index called “Science Citation
Index”. Whereas, Indian Citation Index (ICI) was developed
by the Knowledge Foundation in 2010 for Indian research
work published in local journals at national level.
Benefits of Indexing and Abstracting
Services of Journals
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It acts as an aid in the location and identification of
documents.
 It acts as an effective information retrieval tool for primary
published literature.
 It facilitates the broadest dissemination of information by
pointing researchers to articles that are relevant to his need
quickly.
 Readers can get idea about current published articles scattered
in several journals by consulting a single source in a quickly
retrievable form.
Benefits of Indexing and Abstracting
Services of Journals
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It helps the reader to decide what to read and what not to read
without consulting the original documents. Though it is not
substitutes for the original documents.
It keeps researchers and scholars abreast of current literature in
their fields of interest.
It saves time and energy of the information seekers.
It facilitates wider visibility of the journal article and thereby
helps to improve the Impact Factor of the journals.
National Indexing and Abstracting
Services for Indian S&T Journals
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Indian Science Abstracts (ISA): Indian Science Abstracts
(ISA) is a semi-monthly abstracting journal which has been
reporting scientific work done in India since 1965. It was
published by INSDOC (now NISCAIR). It is a leading
abstracting journal in India covering entire spectrum of
science and technology. Moreover, Indian Science Abstracts
(ISA) database is now available online freely from 2000
onwards at NISCAIR's ISA website with different search
options.

Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Abstracts (MAPA):
MAPA is a bimonthly abstracting journal published by
NISCAIR, New Delhi. It covers world literature on all aspects
of medicinal, aromatic and allied plants.
National Indexing and Abstracting
Services for Indian S&T Journals
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Indian Agricultural Sciences Abstracts (IASA): The IASA
is a bi-annual abstracting journal which has been published by
Directorate of Information and Publications of Agriculture,
ICAR, New Delhi since 2002. It provides indexing and
abstracting services of Indian agricultural journals.
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Indian Animal Sciences Abstracts (IASA): The IASA is a
bi-annual abstracting journal. It has been published by
Directorate of Knowledge Management in Agriculture, ICAR,
New Delhi since 2002. It indexes and abstracts covering
Indian literature on all aspects of animal Science, animal
husbandry and veterinary science.
National Indexing and Abstracting
Services for Indian S&T Journals
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Indian Fisheries Abstracts (IFA): The IFA is a bi-annual
abstracting journal which is published by Central Inland
Fisheries Research Institute (CIFRI), Kolkata since 1967. It
provides indexing and abstracting service covering Indian
literature on management, and conservation of marine,
brackish water, freshwater resources and environments and
fisheries.
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Paryavaran Abstracts (PA): Paryavaran abstract is a
quarterly publication of Environmental Information System,
Ministry of Environment and Forests, New Delhi. It indexes
and abstracts of Indian current literature on all aspects of
environment sciences.
National Indexing and Abstracting
Services for Indian S&T Journals
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Indian Citation Index (ICI): ICI is a citation database
maintained by the Knowledge Foundation (a registered
society) with the required support of M/s Divan Enterprise
since its starting from 2010. It enlists major Indian journals on
multidisciplinary information/ knowledge. Now-a-days, it
becomes one of the most important databases for literature
search published in Indian journals.
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Open J-Gate: Open J-Gate is a database of global journal
literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open JGate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote
Open Access Initiative.
National Indexing and Abstracting
Services for Indian S&T Journals
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IndMed: From 1986 to 31st March 2009, National
Informatics Centre (NIC) and Indian Council of Medical
Research (ICMR) had collaborated to setup ICMR-NIC Centre
for Biomedical Information. They develop IndMed
bibliographic database for Indian Biomedical Literature.
National Indexing and Abstracting Tools
for Indian S&T journals
I&A Tools
Starting
Year
Publisher/
Developer
1935, 1965-
NISCAIR, New Delhi.
Science and
technology
Medicinal and Aromatic
Plants Abstracts
1979
NISCAIR, New Delhi.
Medicinal, aromatic
and allied plants
Indian Agricultural
Sciences Abstracts
2002
ICAR, New Delhi.
Agriculture
Indian Animal Sciences
Abstracts
2002
ICAR, New Delhi.
Animal Husbandry
and veterinary
science
Indian Fisheries
Abstracts
1967
Central Inland
Fisheries Research
Institute, Kolkata
Fishery and
Aquaculture Science
Indian Science
Abstracts
Subject
Coverage
National Indexing and Abstracting Tools
for Indian S&T journals
I&A Tools
Starting
Year
Publisher/
Developer
Subject
Coverage
Paryavaran Abstracts
1984
Environmental
Information System,
Ministry of Environment
and Forests, New Delhi.
Environmental
Science
Indian Citation Index
2010
The Knowledge
Foundation, New Delhi.
Science, Social
Science and Arts.
Open J-Gate
2006
Informatics (India) Ltd,
Bangalore.
Science, Social
Science and Arts in
open access
domain
IndMed
1985
ICMR & NIC, New Delhi.
Biomedical
Science
Concluding Remarks
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Govt. agencies i.e., NISCAIR, ICAR, ICMR and private
organization plays a major role in organizing journal literature
through indexing and abstracting services. But many journals
still are not indexed/ abstracted by this tool.
Government should allocate more funds for govt. and private
agencies to encourage these documentation activities.
Today in the ICT era, there is a need to convert the printed
I&A tools into databases with different search options. It will
facilitate searcher to trace the required documents on online
easily and it also provide online archive of bibliographic data
of back dated issues.
Concluding Remarks
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Shifting from the printed form of scholarly communication to
machine generated databases will be a significant move.
Every journal should be indexed/ abstracted in more than one
national as well as international indexing and abstracting
services. It can help to increase the content visibility of journals
and thereby help to increase the impact factor.
On the other hand, publishing a research paper in a journal
which is not indexed or abstracted means maximum reader will
not be aware about its existence and it is as good as not
published.
So, it is important to promote the importance and benefits of
indexing and abstracting tools among researchers and as well as
publishers.
Thank You