Search the most up-to-date Social Sciences Citation Index online! (called the Web of Science in its online form) Additionally, you can try out a brief tutorial on cited reference searching and the use of the Web of Science.

Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (016.305SO1 - located on the Index Tables) is an index to articles in significant social science journals published throughout the world during the time period of SSCI coverage. Many useful items, including editorials, letters, meeting reports, book reviews, and conference proceedings, are included. Additionally, SSCI indexes a selected number of monographic series; individual chapters of these series are indexed separately. At present, SSCI is issued three times per year, with the third issue being an annual cumulation. Five year cumulations are also issued.

SSCI is one of three companion indexes. The other two are the Science Citation Index (SCI), located in the Chemistry Library, and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), located in the Central Reference Services of the Main Library. Depending on the topic, it may be desirable to search SCI or A&HCI in addition to SSCI.

SSCI is made up of five parts:

• Source Index
• Citation Index
• Corporate Index (located in the same volume as the Source Index)
• Permuterm Subject Index
• Journal Citation Reports (JCR), issued once a year. (located on the Index Tables with SSCI)

• There is also a note on how to find books included in SSCI

  Some searches may require the use of more than one of these parts; on the following pages of this guide, the usual order of use is indicated in brackets after the heading for each index. Labeled sample entries appear on the front inside covers of each SSCI volume. You may want to refer to these sample entries as you work with this guide and with SSCI.

Source Index

Answers such questions as:

• Was this "to-be-published" paper actually published? Where?
• Did a given author publish any articles during a given year?
• Who was cited in a given author's article?
• What is the full citation for an article found in the Citation Index ? (i.e. You have found an article in the Citation Index written by A. Jones and cited in an article by A. Smith. The full citation and bibliographic information for the article authored by A. Smith can be found in the Source Index.)

The Source Index is an author index to current articles written during the period covered by each volume. Entries include the following elements:

• Author (both main author and all co-authors)
• Full Title of Article
• Type of Item if other than a journal article (Review, conference proceeding, etc.)
• Journal Title
• Volume and Issue Number
• Page Number(s)
• Year of Publication
• First author's address (when provided)
• Each entry also reproduces the complete list of references cited in the article.

The Source Index can be used alone to check a writer's publications in a given time period or can be used as the last step of a search involving the Citation Index, the Permuterm Subject Index, or the Corporate Index.

Citation Index [Citation Index --> Source Index]

Answers such questions as:

• Has this item been cited? How frequently? By whom?
• What else has this author written that has been cited?
• Who is using this author's work?

This index is most frequently used to determine whether a given author has been cited in another article or published work and by whom. It is arranged alphabetically by the cited author (an author whose work appears in the bibliography or another author's work). Entries under a cited author's name include any works by the author, no matter how old, that were cited by another author during the period of coverage of the Citation Index . These entries are not complete lists of everything ever published by a cited author; they indicate only those items cited during the year(s) covered by the index. Therefore, if the article you are interested in was written in 1978, you would want to check all of the Citation Index volumes that were published after that date.

A citation entry begins with the cited author's last name and initials in bold capital letters. Within each author entry, articles are arranged chronologically by the years the author's articles were published (oldest to most recent). Adjacent to these publication years are abbreviated titles for the journals in which the articles appeared, as well as the volume numbers and beginning page numbers of these articles. Only the first author for both the cited and the citing articles is given in the Citation Index; references direct users from co-authors to the first named author.

A list of authors who cited a particular article appears under that particular entry. Next to these citing authors is information pertaining to the journal title, volume number, beginning page number, and publication year of the article in which the cited article was referenced. These citing authors can then be looked up in the Source Index, which provides a complete bibliographic citation for the cited author's article.

• NOTE: Citations to articles without an author are located at the end of the last volume of the Citation Index

Corporate Index [Corporate Author section of the Citation Index --> Corporate Index]

Answers such questions as:

• How can I find out who cited this article if it does not have a personal author?
  (use Corporate Author (see below)section of the Citation Index)
• What published works originated from a given organization or institution?
  (use the Corporate Index, which is located in the Source Index)

The Corporate Author section of the Citation Index is used to find cited items which do not contain a personal author. Items are listed by the name of the publishing organization or issuing agency and then by the document title and/or number. Corporately authored items may include:

• Books
• Contracts
• Reports
• Bulletins
• Meetings
• Government publications (U.S. or foreign; under name of issuing or sponsoring agency)
• Court cases (under name of plaintiff, whether individual or corporate)

The format of the citation is the same as is the Citation Index, except the reference year follows the title (and volume and page, if appropriate) of the cited document.

The Corporate Index, located within the Source Index, is divided into two parts:

• Geographic Section:

  Entries in the Geographic Section of the Corporate Index are arranged alphabetically by location, first by country, then by city. States in the U.S. appear together in a separate list located at the beginning of the Geographic Section. Subdivisions within organizations are listed in descending order of magnitude (i.e. university --> department --> laboratory).

  Like the Source Index, the Geographic Section contains the full listing of references cited within a document. To obtain the full citation information for a document, check the Source Index under the name of the first author listed.

• Organization Section:

  This section of the Source Index can be used when the corporate author's geographic location is not known. Organizations are listed alphabetically by name, and each entry indicates the country and city (or state and city in the case of the U.S.) where the organization is located. No other information is given in the information section, so it must be used in conjunction with the Geographic Section.

• NOTE: Anonymous items that lack both personal and corporate authors are listed in the Source Index before the A's.

Permuterm Subject Index [Permuterm Subject Index --> Source Index]

Answers such questions as:

• What articles are available on a given topic?
• Who is currently publishing in a given field on a given topic?

This is a subject index to the items listed in the Source Index. The subject lists are constructed entirely from the key words used in the titles of the articles. Because key words are dependent on the wording of the titles, you should also check for words variants (e.g. check both singular and plural forms of keywords) and synonymous terms. Commonly occurring words such as 'a,' 'and,' and 'the' are not indexed. Every significant title word is included in the volume and is paired with every other significant word in the title. The first word of a word pair is referred to as a "primary term" while the second word of a word pair is referred to as a "co-term." Subtitles are included in the Permuterm Subject Index, but keywords are paired separately from the main titles with which they appear. Subject keywords are arranged alphabetically and appear in bold type. All co-terms are listed alphabetically under each of these primary terms.

Beside each co-term is the name of the author whose article title included both the primary and the co-term. The first time an item or article is represented by a pair of co-terms, the author's name is preceded by an arrow. Note that if you are interested in every item listed under a primary subject term, you can avoid repetitive examination of the same title if you only select items marked by an arrow. However, when using the co-terms to narrow your topic selection, you should disregard the arrows.

A complete citation for the item can be located by looked up the author's name in the Source Index for the year indicated.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

Answers such questions as:

• From what journals have articles been cited and how frequently?
• Does the cited material in a particular journal come primarily from older articles, newer articles, or is it chronologically consistent?
• Which authors use a particular journal? How frequently?

JCR, located on the Index Tables with SSCI, was issued in print until 1987. It is now primarily in microfiche, with introductory material in print. It is issued annually and provides information on specific journals from which material has been cited (i.e. one or more of their articles have been cited). This index utilizes citation analysis to examine the relationship between journals.

The microfiche edition of JCR is divided into six major parts:

• Journal Title Abbreviations: provides full titles for abbreviations of journals covered in JCR.
• Journal Rankings: provides citation data for individual journals; determines overall rank.
• Source Data Listing: shows citation activity generated by individual journals.
• Journal Half-Life Listing: provides information on currency or citation longevity of journal.
• Subject Category Listing: groups journal titles by subject, ranks to show standing in field.
• Cited Journal Listing: provides detail on activity of cited journals.
• Citing Journal Listing: links journals cited in SSCI/SCI/A&HCI to provide detail on the usage of cited journals.

Books in SSCI

Please direct all comments or requests for information to the educlib@uiuc.edu.

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