CC MED - ”Current Contents Medicine" - Database of German and German-Language Journals

Project Description

 CC MED provides access to references to journal articles in life sciences and biomedicine from more than 1000 journals published in German language or in Germany. Searching is free of charge and does not require registration.

Citations are generated from table of contents images of the journal issues, citations submitted by publishers (e.g. German Medical Science) are added to the database.

• Time coverage: Publication year 2000 to present 
• Release date: Autumn 2000
• Data base: approx. 465.000 articles

Development

The following list of requirements played a key role in selecting the software:

• integrated processing, ranging from scanning to the creation of the import file, without having to run different programs
• simple creation of templates for automated conversion of scanned data by the user (i.e. without requiring special programming knowledge)
• simple program operation
• as little manual reworking as possible

The import data is prepared using an add-on program prior to its adoption in the CC MED database. Words marked as incorrect and hyphenations in the original version are manually cleaned up prior to the creation of the import file. The information on the journal title is automatically added when the data record is created.

An add-on program is used to generate a link between the article data and the corresponding journal title based on the shelf mark, to store the scanned-in reproduction of the table of contents for each article entry as a clickable PDF file, and to generate the data that is required for the subsequent order component.

The database structures of the SISIS library management system enable queries to be made using the same graphical interface as the online catalogue (OPAC ZB MED). Since this system is provided with a Z39.50 interface by default, it is possible to integrate the database in external portals.

Further Development of CCMed

CCMed has meanwhile been incorporated in the database pool of the new "Virtual Medical Library" (MedPilot), where simultaneous, parallel searching of multiple databases has already been implemented.

There is currently no plan to conduct ‘intellectual’ subject indexing of the analysed journal articles. Instead, there is the possibility that an automatic indexing method could be employed at a later point in time. The possibility of integrating collected editions and congress reports from the monograph field is currently under investigation.

Just how well the Current Contents database has been able to fill a genuine gap in the locating of medical publications is illustrated by the search statistics for the second half of the year 2000: ZB MED users carried out almost 30,000 searches that returned positive hits.

Sponsored by:

the  German Research Foundation (DFG)

Contact

Kendra Hinnenthal

Tel.: +49 (0)221 478-7083

E-Mail:  kendra.hinnenthal(at)zbmed.de