Chemisches Zentralblatt Author index

In searching for patents on a certain subject, the index is used as in searching for information on any subject. In British Abstracts and Chemical Abstracts the reference entries under subject heading concerning patents are prefixed by the letter P, and in Chemisches Zentralblatt they are marked with an asterisk. The same prefixes are placed before the titles of patents in the author index, which also lists the names of the assignee. In Chemisches Zentralblatt the name of the country in which the patent was first issued is included after the title of the patent in the author index. 

Having almost finished the remarkable work of closing the war and postwar gap in coverage of chemical literature, the editors of Chemisches Zentralblatt are now preparing the publication of several cumulative indexes, indexes to the Erganzungsbande and the Sonderband 1950/54, and indexes to the more recent volumes. No cumulative index has been available in 1960 for the period since 1944, and the 1940-1944 volumes have only one cumulative (author) index. Annual subject indexing of Chemisches Zentralblatt is some three to four years behind in publication. 

Just about that time, in a number of translations from Chemisches Zentralblatt and from Khimicheskii Referativnyi Zhumal the comphcations began to multiply rapidly. It was hard to believe that Chemical Abstracts had missed so many chemical papers. The explanation for not finding these names in the author index must therefore he elsewhere. 

The Institute of Scientific Information of the USSR Academy of Sciences publishes sixteen abstract journals, known collectively as the Referativnyi Zhurnal. One of these sections is the Referativnyi Zhurnal, Khimiya which began as a semi-monthly publication in 1953. In 1955 Biologicheskaya Khimiya which is a part of it, began to be published separately. A metallurgical section commenced in 1956. The format of RZhKh, as it is known, with its arrangement of two columns numbered consecutively, resembles that of Chemical Abstracts, while the classification of the contents is more like that of Chemisches Zentralblatt. Each issue has its author index, and about 3,500 informative abstracts. The abstracts themselves are in Russian, but for non-Russian... 

An abstract is a summary of the important discoveries and conclusions in a paper and provides a way into the content of research publications. Abstract literature allows access to this information in a searchable format. Many of the early journals published annual author and subject indexes. Chemisches Zentralblatt, begun in 1830 and ending in 1969, is the one of the most reliable means into the very early chemical literature. A searchable database is available by subscription through InfoChem [9], which maintains a database for current literature as well. 

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