科学引文索引简介

1. What is SCI?
    SCI是什么？

The history of Science Citation Index (SCI) dates back to the 1950s, when retrieving academic literature was a challenging process. Eugene Garfield, Ph.D., founder of the Science citation index, introduced the concept of citation indexing in a paper published in Science. Dr. Garfield called this phenomenon the "association of ideas index" and proposed a new retrieval method, citation retrieval. He invented citation indexing in order to make document retrieval more efficient and accurate, and later realized that the data of citation indexing could reveal the scientific activity itself more deeply, including the structure of science, the changes of science over time, and the connections among authors.

科学引文索引（SCI）的历史要追溯到上世纪的50年代，当时检索学术文献还是一个极具挑战的过程。科学引文索引的创始人尤金·加菲尔德博士在Science上发文介绍了引文索引这一概念，他认为作者发表论文的文后参考文献能够将这位作者的工作与其他相似主题的论文联系起来。加菲尔德博士把这一现象称为 “association-of-ideas index”，并由此提出了一种新的检索方法——引文检索。他发明引文索引的初衷是为了让文献检索更加高效与准确，后来也意识到引文索引的数据能够更深层地揭示科学活动本身，包括科学的结构、科学随时间的变迁、以及文献作者之间的联系。

2. Difference between SCI and SCIE
    SCI与SCIE的区别

The databases of SCI (Science Citation Index) are divided into the core edition (also known as CD edition) and expanded edition (also known as SCIE). In terms of the origin of SCI, the American Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in the early days sent to its clients (mainly libraries around the world) CD-ROMs containing abstracted articles published in all of the journals included by the ISI. Later, with the development of the Internet, ISI established the SCI internet retrieval system around 1999, and the data that used to be sent in CDs were imported into the website system. Due to limited storage of CDs, all the journals newly-included after 1999 can be retrieved only in the internet system, and they are called SCIE journals. However, the ISI did not stop sending discs to its customers after setting up the website search, which led to the division of SCI into CD and web versions. And because of the full name of SCIE being SCI-expanded, the corresponding original disc version is called SCI core version.

SCI（Science Citation Index）数据库分为核心版（又称光盘版）和扩展版（又称网络版，即 SCI-E）两个版本。就其起源来说，美国科技信息所（The Institute for Scientific Information：ISI）在早期每年向其客户（主要是全世界的图书馆）寄光盘，内容是所有被 ISI 收录的期刊发表文章的摘要，当时收录的期刊没有现在多。后来随着互联网的发展，ISI 在 1999 年左右建立了 SCI 网络检索系统，原先需要寄光盘的数据也都导入网站系统。以后每年新增的期刊则基本上只在网络上检索，而不入光盘。能通过网站检索到的期刊都称为 SCI-E。但在建立网站检索后，ISI 并没有停止向其客户寄光盘，这就导致了 SCI有光盘版和网络版之分。又由于 SCI-E 全称 SCI-expanded，中文意思是 SCI 扩展版，于是就把对应原来光盘版的称为 SCI 核心。

For ISI, the difference between SCI and SCIE is only in the way of release. Therefore, it cannot be said that SCI is better than SCIE. Articles published in SCIE are also indexed by SCI. 

所以 SCI 与 SCI-E 对于 ISI 来说，只是发布方式上的区别，是历史的原因造成的，不能片面地说 SCI 一定比 SCI-E 好。在国内SCI/SCI-E 被作为划分期刊档次和评价奖励的标准，甚至有些单位不承认 SCI-E，这只能是由于科技管理部门对 SCI 的历史了解不够所致。实际上，在中国，经国家科技部等相关部门研究决定，从 2000年起，SCI 论文统计用检索系统改为用 SCI-E。也就是说，发表在 SCI-E期刊上的文章同时也被 SCI 检索。也可理解为，在项目申报和职称评审时，写 SCI 即可。

科学引文索引（SCI）发展时间线

（文章信息来源：JMR网站、科睿唯安微信公众号）