Indexing/Abstracting Services and Databases

Susan C. Dresley, Volpe National Transportation Systems Center Library, compiler

ABI/Inform: Ann Arbor, MI: Bell & Howell Information and Learning Co.

Provides summaries and citations from over 1000 academic management, marketing, and general business journals, with full text available for more than 500 of these publications. Over 350 English-language titles from outside the United States are included as part of this collection. Three different product lines are currently offered: ABI/INFORM Global covers more than 1,300 sources, including over 350 titles from outside the U.S; ABI/INFORM Research covers more than 800 sources; ABI/INFORM Select covers about 350 sources--plus citations from the most recent six months of The Wall Street Journal -- with coverage beginning in 1990. Available: DIALOG and the Internet.

ARRB Transport Research Ltd. Australian Transport Index (ATRI). Available from: www.informit.com.au/; Internet; Accessed on 7 March 2001.

Bibliographic database accessible by subscription through Informit Online. Contains over 120,000 records, from 1976 onwards, of transport?related publications including journal articles, conference papers, and holdings of other libraries with transport collections. It contains comprehensive coverage of Australian publications, as well as selective but extensive records of items published overseas. Covers road safety, transport economics, transport administration, intelligent transport systems, transport and environment, public transport, pavement research, highway engineering, traffic engineering, vehicle design and safety, and soil and rock mechanics.

Current Contents: Philadelphia, PA: Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). 1993 -

This database displays the tables of contents from about 7,000 journals and books. Items covered include: articles, corrections, meeting abstracts, commentaries, reviews, and letters to the editor. Author provided abstracts are available for some articles. The subject areas covered by Current Contents databases are: Life Sciences; Physical, Chemical, and Earth Sciences; Agriculture, Biology, and Environmental Sciences; Clinical Medicine; Engineering, Computing and Technology; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Arts and Humanities. All subject areas can be searched simultaneously, providing a good resource for cross-disciplinary research. Or select and search one of eight individual subject areas.

EI Compendex: New York: Engineering Information, Inc. 1970-

Covers the core literature of the engineering field, including related architectural specialties and technologies such as civil, structural and mechanical engineering. Citations are drawn from approximately 5000 international journals, conference papers and technical reports. Each year, over 220,000 new abstracts are added from 175 disciplines and major specialties within these broad engineering areas: mechanical, civil, environmental, electrical, structural, process, materials science, solid state physics and superconductivity, bioengineering, energy, chemical, optics, air and water pollution, solid waste management, hazardous waste, road transportation, and transportation safety. In addition to applied engineering, coverage also extends to manufacturing, quality control, and engineering management issues. Available: DIALOG, CD-ROM, and the Internet.

Environmental Bibliography (EPB) Santa Barbara, CA: International Academy at Santa Barbara, Environmental Studies Institute. 1973-

This is a "broad-based, interdisciplinary database covering more than 500 technical and general environmentally related journals" beginning in 1973 that focuses on the following general topic areas: human ecology, agriculture, industry, science and technology, water resources, air, water management and pollution, energy, nutrition and health, land resources, conservation, wildlife, and nature. New citations are added quarterly. Corresponds to print equivalent Environmental Periodicals Bibliography. Available: DIALOG and the Internet.

LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe: Dayton, OH: LEXIS-NEXIS

Is one of the single largest web-based databases for current worldwide news and information. The database contains full text and abstracts of news, business, and legal information and provides full-text access to more than 7,000 individual titles. Users can search foreign and domestic newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. There is wide geographic coverage and a translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France Press, and Xinhua (New China) News Agency. The database is updated daily for most newspapers and even hourly for some wire services and media transcripts. Available: Internet.

METADEX: Philadelphia, PA: Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, 1966-

Is the only comprehensive source for information on metals and alloys: their properties, manufacturing, applications, and development. Information from over 2,000 journals, plus patents, dissertations, government reports, conference proceedings, and books are indexed by expert editors. Major areas of coverage include steel, microstructure, strength, refining, casting, coatings, heat treatment, metal matrix composites, nonferrous metals, corrosion, extracting and smelting, blast furnaces, machining, welding, testing and analysis, and environmental and safety issues. METADEX is the online version of ASM Review of Metal Literature (1966-1967), Metals Abstracts (1968 to the present), Alloys Index (1974 to the present), and Steels Supplement (1983-1984). Available: DIALOG and the Internet.

NTIS (National Technical Information Service): Springfield, VA: U.S. Department of Commerce. 1964-

The database consists of unclassified government-sponsored research, development, and engineering reports, as well as other analyses prepared by government agencies, their contractor, or grantees. Also includes citations of software and data files issued by government agencies. The web version, from NTIS (http://www.ntis.gov), is limited to documents published 1990 to present and most records do not include abstracts. Also available: CD-Rom, DIALOG, and Internet.

National Transportation Library (U.S.). Available at: http://ntl.bts.gov; Internet; Accessed on 28 February 2001.

Created in 1998 by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the National Transportation Library is a collection of electronic full?text documents available via the Internet and CD?Rom. The library provides online access to more than 8,000 full?text documents including documents drawn from Federal agencies, State DOTs, local governments, associations, and University web sites covering all aspects of transportation in the United States.

North Carolina State University. Center for Transportation and the Environment. Available from: http://itre.ncsu.edu/cte/wildlife.htm; Internet; Accessed on 28 January 2001.

Includes EnvRIP, a database of environmental research in progress, and Wildlife Ecology in Transportation, a bibliographic database of literature and Web sites on wildlife issues in transportation.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Center for Transportation Analysis. Available from: http://cta.ed.ornl.gov/; Internet; Accessed on 27 February 2001.

"The Center for Transportation Analysis (CTA) in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducts innovative, cost?effective research and development on transportation energy and environmental issues, national transportation planning and policy, transportation systems engineering, and military transportation and logistics. CTA focuses on multi modal national and international transportation systems." The Web site gives access to publications of the CTA's staff, and links to other sites of related interest.

PAIS International: New York, NY: Public Affairs Information Service. 1972 -

A selected index to public policy literature, with emphasis on contemporary issues and the making and evaluating of public policy. Worldwide in scope, PAIS indexes publications in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The print equivalent is PAIS International in Print. Updated monthly. Available: DIALOG and the Internet.

PATH (Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways) Database : Berkeley, CA: University of California, Institute of Transportation Studies. 1940-

The California PATH provides access to the largest and most comprehensive collection of bibliographic information on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The Database is accessible on the Internet through a partnership established between the California PATH Program and the Transportation Research Board. The Database contains references to all aspect of Intelligent Transportation Systems, ranging from historical materials dating back to the 1940s to topics of current international research and applications. It reflects a wide coverage of information on ITS, including monographs, journal article, conference papers, technical reports, theses, websites, and selected medial coverage. Full bibliographic information is provided, and URLs are included for those documents which are available full-text. The database is maintained by the Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Berkeley. Available: http://www4.nationalacademies.org/trb/tris.nsf/web/path; Internet

PubSCIENCE: Oak Ridge, TN: Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) U.S. Department of Energy. 1999 -

PubSCIENCE is a World Wide Web product designed to facilitate searching and accessing peer reviewed journal literature in the physical sciences and other energy-related disciplines. Allows the user to search across abstracts and citations of multiple publishers. Once the user has found an interesting abstract, a hyperlink provides access to the publisher's server to obtain the full text article. The article will come up immediately if the user or his/her organization has a subscription to the journal. If the user lacks such a subscription, access to the full text can be obtained by pay per view, by special arrangement with the publisher, library access or through commercial providers. PubSCIENCE is available for public use through the Government Printing Office's "GPO ACCESS". Available: http://pubsci.osti.gov/ or http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs.

PsycINFO : Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. 1984-

Database covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, and other areas. Coverage is worldwide, and includes references and abstracts to over 1,300 journals and dissertations in more than 30 languages, and to book chapters and books in the English language. Popular literature is excluded. PsycINFO is the online version of the print publication Psychological Abstracts. Updated monthly. Available: DIALOG, CD-ROM, and the Internet.

SAE Publications and Standards Database: Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers. 1906 -

The Publications & Standards Database contains detailed summaries and bibliographic data for more than 69,000 documents published by SAE, including technical papers since 1906, magazine articles, books, all ground vehicle and aerospace standards, specifications, and research reports. Available: CD-ROM (updated annually) or Internet (updated monthly).

Swedish National Road and Transport Institute. Available from: http://www.vti.se/edefault.asp; Internet; Accessed on 2 March 2001.

Government research institute. Its site provides access to research reports and electronic journals in transportation, road construction and the environmental impact of transportation projects in Sweden.

Swedish National Road and Transport Institute. Library and Information Centre. Transguide. Available from: http://www.transguide.org; Internet; Accessed on 2 March 2001.

Transguide provides access to five library catalogs, including TRAX, the catalog of the Institute's library. It is the largest Nordic transportation research database, containing approximately 90,000 references to reports, conference proceedings, books, standards, statistics and more. Include a calendar of upcoming conferences, covering approximately 150 events. As of March 2001 the interface and much of the content is in Swedish, but an English interface is being developed.

TRB Research in Progress. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board. Available from: http://www.dcdata.com/trip/; Internet; Accessed on 7 March 2001.

Searchable database of current research sponsored or conducted by the federal and state transportation agencies , universities, and related transportation organizations and associations.

TRIS. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board, 1968 to present.

TRIS = Transportation Research Information Service. Bibliographic database available for subscription or fee from SilverPlatter (as part of the Transport CD-ROM) or DIALOG, and free on the World Wide Web as TRIS Online. TRIS is the prime source in all areas of transportation research. Produced and maintained since 1968 by the Transportation Research Board at the National Academy of Sciences, TRIS is the world's largest and most comprehensive bibliographic source for transportation research covering books, journal articles, technical reports and other media. It gives coverage of the literature from the 1960s to the present, with some coverage of prior years. As of 2002 it contains over 550,000 records and grows by almost 25,000 new records annually.

TRIS Online. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board. Available at http://ntl.bts.gov/tris; Internet; Accessed 1 March 2001.

TRIS Online is the Web version of the Transportation Research Information Service. It contains the full TRIS database, with links to full?text documents and links for direct ordering of reports from the National Technical Information Service, the Transportation Research Board, and other publishers. TRIS Online also contains the PATH database and provides links to the ITRD (International Transport Research Documentation) database for further coverage of international transportation. TRIS Online is a component of the National Transportation Library, providing a record of the transportation research literature of the latter half of the 20th century and continuing into the 21st.

Transport : Norwood, MA: SilverPlatter Information Inc. 1968-

TRANSPORT consists of two component bibliographic databases produced by the world's leading transportation research organizations: The International Transport Research Documentation (ITRD) produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) based in Paris; and the Transportation Research Information Services database (TRIS) produced by the Transportation Research Board of the United States. Each database has a unique orientation. Together, the databases feature research in transportation systems and their components: highway, traffic, transport, road safety, intermodal transport, transport economics, transport policy and social sciences of transportation. References are in English, French, German, and Spanish and include research reports, books, articles from journals and reviews, theses, standards, and specifications, conference proceedings, and summaries of research in progress. Available: Internet; CD-ROM; Hard Disk.

Transportation Research Laboratory. Available from: http://www.trl.co.uk/index.htm; Internet; Accessed on 28 February 2001.

TRL is an independent organization for research in surface transportation, working with the public, private and independent sectors of the UK and world?wide. TRL's Web site provides catalogs of the organization's research and technical reports.

University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). Available from: http://www.umtri.umich.edu/; Internet; Accessed on 28 February 2001.

UMTRI is a multi-disciplinary transportation research center. Its Web site includes: UMTRI Bibliography, a searchable database of the institute's publication; UMTRI Library Catalog, a searchable database of the UMTRI library collections; Work in Progress, describing current UMTRI research projects; and a collection of downloadable software.

Wilson Applied Science & Technology Abstracts (WAST): New York: H.W. Wilson, Co. 1983-

Indexes articles, product evaluations, and book reviews in over 390 leading English-language periodicals published in the U.S. and elsewhere. The database includes trade and industrial publications, journals of professional and learned societies, and specialized subject periodicals. Applied Science & Technology Abstracts is Wilson's Applied Science & Technology Index with abstracts. The abstracts range from 50 to 150 words and describe the content and scope of the source articles. Subjects covered include all fields of engineering, aeronautics, chemistry, computer technology and applications, earth sciences, energy and environment, mathematics, metallurgy, and physics. WAST also covers industries such as construction, materials, robotics, telecommunications, and transportation. WAST indexing covers October 1983 to present. Abstracts are available for articles from March 1993 to present. Updated monthly. Available: DIALOG, CD-ROM, and the Internet.