INTRODUCTION:

RESEARCH

Research is composed of re and search. re is a prefix - again, a new or over again search is a verb - to examine closely & carefully, to test and try. Together they form a noun describing –“ A careful, systematic study and investigation in some field of knowledge, undertaken to establish facts or principles.” Research comprises "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications" ^[1]
.

Research has been defined in different ways as depicted below

Francis Rummel: “ Research is a systematic careful enquiry or examination to discover new information on relationships and to expand and verify existing knowledge.”

John Best: Research is more systematic activity directed towards discovery and the development of an organized body of knowledge.

A broad definition of research is given by Martyn Shuttleworth - "In the broadest sense of the word, the definition of research includes any gathering of data, information and facts for the advancement of knowledge."

Another definition of research is given by Creswell who states - "Research is a process of steps used to collect and analyze information to increase our understanding of a topic or issue". It consists of three steps: Pose a question, collect data to answer the question, and present an answer to the question.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines research in more detail as "a studious inquiry or examination; especially : investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws" ^[2,3,4] .

Characteristics of research

1. Rigorous- Procedures followed to find answers to questions are relevant, appropriate and justified.

2. Systematic- The procedure adopted to undertake an investigation follow a certain logical sequence. The different steps cannot be taken in a haphazard way.

3. Valid and verifiable- Whatever is concluded on the basis of new findings is correct and can be verified by others.

4. Empirical- Any conclusion drawn are based on hard evidence gathered from information collected from real life experiences or observations.

5. Critical- Critical scrutiny of the procedures used and the methods employed is crucial to a research enquiry. The process adopted and the procedures used must be able to withstand critical scrutiny.

6. Accuracy- The data are gathered, recorded and analyzed with as complete accuracy as possible by using standardized tool.

Functions of research

• It produces new knowledge.

• It helps in the development of researcher intellectually and professionally.

• It leads to better teaching as new knowledge is integrated into teaching programme.

• It can be a source of income. Funded research is a source of income.

• It promotes progress of the society.

• It brings prestige to the person and institution.

• It enables finding of solution to the problems and to resolve conflict in society.

Research could be broadly classified on the basis of method and purpose which could be further detailed as given in Figure 1

PUBLICATIONS

“Publications make scientific information publically available, and allow the rest of the academic audience to evaluate the quality of the research.” Because publications form the basis for both new research and the application of findings, they can affect not only the research community but also, indirectly, society at large. Researchers therefore have a responsibility to ensure that their publications are honest, clear, accurate, complete and balanced, and should avoid misleading, selective or ambiguous reporting ^[5]. Categories according to their purpose:

ü Publications intended to advance science and generate new information (scientific publication), through publishing their findings, researchers gain recognition and become identified with scientific results.

ü Publications intended to disseminate information to the social environment.

Various Types of Publications

There could be various types of publications scientific, non-scientific, etc. ^[6] The given Table1 shows some types of publications along with their comparisons

Other Types of Publications includes Peer-reviewed scientific articles, Non-refereed scientific articles, Scientific books (monograph), Publications intended for professional communities, Publications intended for the general public, Public artistic and design activities , Theses, Patents and invention disclosures, Audiovisual material, ICT software etc.

The characteristics of good and responsible Research Publication are shown in Figure 2.

Figure2: The characteristics of good and responsible Research Publication

ACADEMIC PUBLISHING

Academic publishing is the process of placing the results of one's research into the literature. There are various sources for literature

Primary literature

It includes scientific research on original work initially published in scientific journals. Patents and technical reports, for minor research results and engineering and design work (including computer software) are primary literature.

Secondary literature

Articles in review journals (which provide a synthesis of research articles on a topic to highlight advances and new lines of research), books for large projects, broad arguments, or compilations of articles include secondary literature.

Tertiary literature: It includes encyclopedias and similar works.

Most academic work is published in Journal article which could be print to the electronic format and Book or Thesis form. There are Open access publishing and Open access self-archiving

TYPES OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS ^[6]

• Scientific articles: published in scientific journals

• Patents specialized for science and technology (for example, biological patents and chemical patents)

• Books: wholly written by one or a small number of co-authors.

• Book chapter: where each chapter is the responsibility of a different author or set of authors, though the editor may take some responsibility for ensuring consistency of style and content

• Presentations at academic conferences, especially those organized by learned societies

• Conference Proceedings

• Government reports such as a forensic investigation conducted by a government agency

• World wide web scientific publications

• Books, technical reports, pamphlets, and working papers issued by individual researchers or research organizations on their own initiative; these are sometimes organised into a series.

• Blogs and science forums

TYPES OF ARTICLES

• Letters /communications: short descriptions of important current research findings that are usually fast-tracked for immediate publication because they are considered urgent.

• Research notes are short descriptions of current research findings that are considered less urgent or important than Letters.

• Articles are usually between five and twenty pages and are complete descriptions of current original research findings.

• Supplemental articles contain a large volume of tabular data that is the result of current research and may be dozens or hundreds of pages with mostly numerical data. Some journals now only publish this data electronically on the internet.

• Review articles do not cover original research but rather accumulate the results of many different articles on a particular topic into a coherent narrative about the state of the art in that field.

• Review articles provide information about the topic and also provide journal references to the original research.

• Reviews may be entirely narrative, or may provide quantitative summary estimates resulting from the application of meta-analytical methods.

Peer-reviewed scientific articles

They include the refereed Journal articles with original research. It fulfils the definition of a scientific publication, mainly includes unpublished material and Peer-reviewed articles. Journal in which the article is published has an ISSN code. The category includes articles presenting the results of original research.

Review article, Literature review, Systematic review

Fulfils the definition of a scientific publication, with the exception of the requirement to generate new information. Based on the most important refereed journal articles, the article is peer-reviewed. Journal in which the article is published has an ISSN code.The category includes Reviews of a specific field of science based on original publications or other results presented in research

Book section, chapters in research books

-Fulfils the definition of a scientific publication, Mainly includes unpublished material

-Peer-reviewed by editorial board or equivalent, the book has an ISBN number. The book is published by a scientific publisher. The category includes articles published in scientific research books and articles published in scientific year books or equivalent.

Conference proceedings

-Fulfils the definition of a scientific publication. Conference proceedings printed or otherwise made publically available. It includes full paper, not just an abstract, Peer-reviewed.

The category includes: Articles based on invited scientific seminar presentations or posters

Non-refereed scientific articles

Non-refereed journal articles

It also includes brief research reports, review articles, editorials, book reviews, discussion papers and comments in scientific journals. The journal has an editorial board, but may not have peer review procedures. The journal in which the article is published has an ISSN code

Book section

Non-refereed book sections, which possibly have an editorial board, but are non-refereed. The book has a scientific publisher. The book has an ISBN number. The category includes Non-refereed book sections.

Non-refereed conference proceedings

Conference proceedings printed or otherwise made publically available. Full paper is considered , not just an abstract. The category includes non-refereed articles based on invited scientific seminar presentations or posters.

EER REVIEW

They are essentially a means of quality control, a term which also encompasses other means towards the same goal. The "quality" being referred to here is the scientific one, which consists of

Transparency and repeatability of the research for independent verification, The validity of the conclusions and interpretations drawn from the reported data, Overall importance for advance within a given field of knowledge, Novelty, Applicability.

Paper when submitted for the publication is reviewed by one or more referees (who are academics in the same field) who check that the content of the paper is suitable for publication in the journal. Peer review is a central concept for most academic publishing; other scholars in a field must find a work sufficiently high in quality for it to merit publication. The process also guards against plagiarism. The process of peer review is organized by the journal editor. The peer review process is increasingly managed online, through the use of proprietary systems, commercial software packages (e.g. ScholarOne Manuscripts, Aries Editorial Manager, E Journal Press, and Scholastica), or open source and free software (e.g. Open Journal Systems).

PUBLISHING PROCESS

• Online submission of the article by the authors

• Peer review step

• Reviewers comments given to authors

• Corrections submitted by the authors

• Acceptance/Rejection

• Copyright transfer by the authors to publication house

• Copy editing, typesetting

• Proof reading by authors

• Printing and online publication.

SCIENTOMETRICS

The science of measuring and analysing science is scientometrics. The scientific measurement of the work of scientists, especially by way of analysing their publications and the citations within them. Scientometrics is often done using bibliometrics which is a measurement of the impact of (scientific) publications ^[7]. (Harnad, 2009).

Garfield founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) which is heavily used for scientometric analysis. The Science Citation Index (SCI) is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield in 1960, which is now owned by Thomson Reuters. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters. ISI offered bibliographic database services. Its specialty is citation indexing and analysis, a field pioneered by Garfield ^[8].

It maintains citation databases covering thousands of academic journals, including a continuation of its long time print-based indexing service the Science Citation Index (SCI), as well as the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). All of these are available via ISI's Web of Knowledge database service. This database allows a researcher to identify which articles have been cited most frequently, and who has cited them. The ISI also publishes the annual Journal Citation Reports which list an impact factor for each of the journals that it tracks. ISI publishes Science Watch, a newsletter

Table: 2 Widely used databases

which identifies every two months one paper published in the previous two years as a "fast breaking paper" in each of 22 broad fields of science. The Scholarly Database addresses a central need for the large-scale study of science: access to high quality, centralized, comprehensive scholarly datasets ^[9]. (La Rowe, 2007). Some of the widely used databases are discussed in the given Table No 2.

General Internet searches ^{[10, 11]}

1. Google : Has tailored products for searching scholarly works, patents, images, video, new feeds, etc.

2. Yahoo! has many facets and tailored products for searching the Internet;.

3. AltaVista provides topical searches to the web, image and news articles. It aggregates information into highly segmented indexes, helping users refine their searches and quickly access the most pertinent and useful information.

4. Wolfram Alpha offers an alternative to web searching.

5. Google Squared extracts structured data from across the web and presents its results in a spreadsheet-like format aimed at new ways to present and understand information on the web. Google Squared was announced at their Searchology summit May 13, 2009, at a time close to the launch of Wolfram Alpha

6. Bing (formerly Live Search) released in the same time frame, includes a listing of search suggestions as queries are entered and a list of related searches (called "Explorer pane") based on semantic technology is offered by Microsoft.

CITATIONS

Academic authors cite sources they have used. This gives credit to authors whose work they use and avoids plagiarism. It also provides support for their assertions and arguments and helps readers to find more information on the subject. Each scholarly journal uses a specific format for citations (also known as references). Among the most common formats used in research papers are the APA, CMS, and MLA styles.

· The American Psychological Association (APA) style : social sciences.

· The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) used in business, communications, economics, and social sciences. The CMS style uses footnotes at the bottom of page to help readers locate the sources.

· The Modern Language Association (MLA) style : humanities.

CITATION INDEX

A citation index is an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. Some of the examples include

Novel approaches in herbal cosmetics - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1473-2165.2008.00369.x/pdf‎ by D Chanchal - ‎2008 - ‎Cited by 49 - ‎Related articles Novel approaches in herbal cosmetics. Deep Chanchal, M.Pharm1, & Saraf Swarnlata, M.Pharm, PhD2. 1Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute, Kumhari, Chattisgarh, ...

Lymphatic targeting of zidovudine using surface-engineered ...www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19005941‎ by CD Kaur - ‎2008 - ‎Cited by 37 - ‎Related articles The present investigation was aimed at lymphatic targeting of zidovudine (ZDV)-loaded surface-engineered liposomes (SE liposomes). Surface of liposomes ...

IMPACT FACTOR

The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now part of Thomson Reuters. Impact factors are calculated yearly for those journals that are indexed in Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports. ^[12].In a given year, the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years ^[13].

Impact Factor Calculation

In a given year, the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years.

For example, if a journal has an impact factor of 3 in 2013, then its papers published in 2011 and 2012 received 3 citations each on average in 2013. The 2013 impact factor of a journal would be calculated as follows:

2013 impact factor = A/B

A = the number of times articles published in 2011 and 2012 were cited by indexed journals during 2013.

B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2011 and 2012.

("Citable items" are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or Letters-to-the-Editor.)

2013 impact factors are actually published in 2014; they cannot be calculated until all of the 2012 publications have been processed by the indexing agency.

New journals, which are indexed from their first published issue, will receive an impact factor after two years of indexing; in this case, the citations to the year prior to Volume 1, and the number of articles published in the year prior to Volume 1 are known zero values. Journals that are indexed starting with a volume other than the first volume will not get an impact factor until they have been indexed for three years. Annuals and other irregular publications sometimes publish no items in a particular year, affecting the count. The impact factor relates to a specific time period; it is possible to calculate it for any desired period.Journal Citation Reports (JCR) also includes a 5-year impact factor. The JCR shows rankings of journals by impact factor, if desired by discipline, such as organic chemistry or psychiatry.

Calculation for impact factor revised to exclude self-citations.

A= citations in 1992 to articles published in 1990-91

B= 1992 self-citations to articles published in 1990-91

C= A - B = total citations minus self-citations to recent articles

D= number of articles published 1990-91

E= revised impact factor (C/D)

Some related values, also calculated and published by the same organization, are:

The immediacy index: the number of citations the articles in a journal receive in a given year divided by the number of articles published.

The cited half-life: the median age of the articles that were cited in Journal Citation Reports each year. For example, if a journal's half-life in 2005 is 5, that means the citations from 2001-2005 are half of all the citations from that journal in 2005, and the other half of the citations precede 2001.

Table 3: Dermatology Journals with impact factor

NAME OF JOURNAL	IMPACT FACTOR/ ABSTRACTING/INDEXING	SOCIETY/PUBLISHER	COUNTRY
Archives of Dermatological Research	1.844 , PubMed/Medline, Science Citation Index, (Sci Search), SCOPUS	Springer	Germany
Australasian Journal of Dermatology	0.973, MEDLINE/PubMed (NLM) SCOPUS (Elsevier)Sci Search	New Zealand Dermatological Society	Australia
British Journal of Dermatology	4.26, Dermatology: 4 / 48 ,Science Citation Index® Embase/Excerpta medica	British Association Of Dermatologists. Wiley Blackwell	Britain
Current Drug Delivery	MEDLINE/Index Medicus, BIOSIS Previews, BIOISIS Scopus, EMBASE	Bentham Science Publishers	USA
Journal Of Investigative Dermatology	4.406 , SciSearch/SCI Expanded, Embase/Excerpta Medica, Index Medicus/MEDLINE,	Society for Investigative Dermatology and the European Society for Dermatological Research,Wiley Blackwell	USA
Dermatology	1.832, Science Citation Index Scopus , EMBASE	Karger	Switzerland
Experimental Dermatology	3.239, Science Citation Index®,EMBASE/Excerpta Medica (Elsevier)	European Immunodermatology society, Wiley Blackwell	Europe
Indian Journal Of Dermatology	SCOPUS, PubMed,Excerpta Medica / EMBASE	Medknow Publications	India
Current Pharmaceutical Design	4.414,Science Citation Index Scopus , EMBASE	Bentham Science Publishers	USA

The aggregate impact factor for a subject category: it is calculated taking into account the number of citations to all journals in the subject category and the number of articles from all the journals in the subject category.

Author impact metrics refers to a whole range of quantitative methods of determining scholarly impact in the digital age. Newer indices measuring scholarly impact include:

· Age-weighted citation rate (AWCR, AWCRpA) & AW-index

· Contemporary h-index

· Eigen factor

· Egghe's g-index

· E-index

· Google's I10-index

· Hirsch's h-index

· Individual h-index

· R-Impact: The Reliability-Based Citation Impact Factor

· Universal h-index

· 'w-index' or Wu Index

What is h-Index?

The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar, group of scientists or department or university or country.

The index was suggested by Jorge E. Hirsch, a physicist at University of California, San Diego, as a tool for determining theoretical physicists' relative quality and is sometimes called the Hirsch index or Hirsch number. The index is based on the distribution of citations received by a given researcher's publications. The h-index “gives an estimate of the importance, significance, and broad impact of a scientist’s cumulative research contributions” ^[14].

Hirsch writes: A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.

• A scholar with an index of h has published h papers each of which has been cited in other papers at least h times.

• Thus, the h-index reflects both the number of publications and the number of citations per publication.

• The index is designed to improve upon simpler measures such as the total number of citations or publications. The index works properly only for comparing scientists working in the same field; citation conventions differ widely among different fields.

Figure 3: The plot of h index

The h-index can be manually determined using citation databases or using automatic tools. Subscription-based databases such as Scopus and the Web of Knowledge provide automated calculators.

Calculation of h-Index

The h-index can be manually determined by

v Scopus and the Web of Knowledge provide automated calculators.

v Harzing's Publish or Perish program calculates the h-index based on Google Scholar entries.

v In July 2011 Google trialled a tool which allows a limited number of scholars to keep track of their own citations and also produces a h-index and an i10-index.

v Each database is likely to produce a different h for the same scholar, because of different coverage: Google Scholar has more citations than Scopus and Web of Science but the smaller citation collections tend to be more accurate.

I10-index

The I10-index indicates the number of academic papers an author has written that have at least ten citations from others. It was introduced in July 2011 by Google as part of their work on Google Scholar, a search engine dedicated to academic and related papers ^[15].

Hirsch suggested (with large error bars) that, for physicists, a value for h of about 12 might be typical for advancement to tenure (associate professor) at major research universities. A value of about 18 could mean a full professorship, 15–20 could mean a fellowship in the American Physical Society, and 45 or higher could mean membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences.

PLAGIARISM (DISAMBIGUATION)

Academic dishonesty includes fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplication, least publishable units, and neglecting support ^{[16] .} Academic dishonesty is the “fraudulent action or attempt by a writer or writers to use unauthorized or unacceptable means in any academic work” ^{[17] .}

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work. “The appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit” is also plagiarism.

ü Plagiarism is now considered academic dishonesty and a breach of journalistic ethics, subject to sanctions like expulsion and other severe career damage.

ü Within academia, plagiarism by students, professors, or researchers is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud, and offenders are subject to academic censure, up to and including expulsion.

ü Self-plagiarism (also known as "recycling fraud”) is the reuse of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one's own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or without citing the original work.

ü Articles of this nature are often referred to as duplicate or multiple publication.

Plagiarism on the Internet: Content scraping is copying and pasting from websites and blogs.

Portals of Interest

Scopus: www.scopus.com/scopus/home.url

Web of Science: http://thomsonreuters.com/products_ services/science/science_products/a-z/web_of_science/

Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.co.in/schhp? hl=en&tab=ws

Indian Science Index: http://indiancitationindex.com/

Quadsearch: http://quadsearch.csd.auth.gr/index.php?lan=1&s=2

CONCLUSION:

In the era of fast research and development there is ardent need for Academicians to publish their work and make it known to public along with maintaining their originality. It’s also the duty of the authors and publishers to follow ethics of publication and not mislead the budding researchers as they are the foundation of the society and the publications lay path for them. Literature review lays the basis of the research and research forms the new society hence we Academicians have more responsibility of producing best literature to our coming generations. Also time to time assessing ourselves on the scale of Scientometrics is also required to maintain balance between research and publishing.

REFERENCES:

1. OECD Frascati Manual: proposed standard practice for surveys on research and experimental development, 6th edition. 2002. Retrieved 27 May 2012 from www.oecd.org/sti/frascatimanual.

2. A b c Unattributed. ""Research" in 'Dictionary' tab". Merriam Webster (m-w.com). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 13 August 2011.

3. Shuttleworth, M. "Definition of Research". Experiment Resources. Experiment-Research.com. 2008. Retrieved 14 August 2011.

4. Creswell, JW. Educational Research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson. 2008.

5. Wager E and Kleinert S. Responsible research publication: international standards for authors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 50 in: Mayer T & Steneck N (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore ; 2011: pp 309-16. (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7)

6. Ministry of education, publication type classification , Manual, 2010: 1-18.

7. Harnad, S. Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise. Scientometrics 79 (1); (2009).

8. SCI® Journal Citation Reports®: A bibliometric analysis of science journals in the ISI® database. Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information, Inc.®, 1993.

9. La Rowe G, Ambre S, Burgoon JK, Weimao K and Börner K.The Scholarly Database and Its Utility for Scientometrics Research. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, Madrid, Spain, June 25-27, 2007: pp. 457-462.

10. Abercrombie RK and Udoeyop AW. A Study of Scientometric Methods to Identify Emerging Technologies; 2009: 1-12.

11. Lardinois F. (2009). Wolfram Alpha: Our First Impressions. Retrieved January 14, 2011, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wolframalpha_our_first_impressions.php.

12. Garfield E. Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation. Science 178; 1972:471-9.

13. "Introducing the Impact Factor". Retrieved 2009-08-26.

14. Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(46); 2005: 16569-16572.

15. Google Scholar Blog. "Google Scholar Citations Open To All", Google, 16 November 2011, retrieved 24 November 2011.

16. Akbulut Y, Şendag S, Birinci G, Kiliçer K, Şahin MC, Odabaşi HF. Exploring the types and reasons of Internet-triggered academic dishonesty among Turkish undergraduate students: Development of Internet-triggered Academic Dishonesty Scale (ITADS). Computers and Education 51, 1; 2008: 463-473.

17. Lambert, G.E., Hogan, N.L., Barton, S.M. 2003.Collegiate Academic Dishonesty Revisited: What Have They Done, How Often Have They Done It, Who Does It, And Why Did They Do It? Electronic Journal of Sociology, 7(4) Retrieved from http://www.sociology.org/content/vol7.4/lambert_etal.html [12.10.2012].

Received on 28.11.2013 Accepted on 10.12.2013

Asian J. Res. Pharm. Sci. 2013; Vol. 3: Issue 4, Pg 220-228

Particulars	Scholarly Journals	Professional/Trade Publications	Popular/General Interest Magazines
Purpose	Report original research or theories to advance knowledge	Provide practical information for members of a profession, industry, or organization: news, trends, products, research summaries	Provide information, news, opinions, entertainment to the general public
Writing Style	Uses specialized vocabulary Requires prior training or subject expertise	Uses specialized vocabulary. Requires prior training or subject expertise.	Uses vocabulary understood by the general public.
References / Bibliography	Documentation of sources, quotes, facts, and ideas is required. Must be cited in footnotes or a bibliography.	Documentation of sources not required, though there are sometimes brief bibliographies of further readings	Documentation of sources is not required and is rare
Authors	Scholars or resarchers. Academic credentials, degrees, and/or affiliation are almost always provided.	Journalists or members of the profession, industry, or organization	Journalists

Databases	Access provided
Science Citation Index SCI®	Bibliographic information, Abstracts, and cited references found in 3,700 of the world's leading scholarly science and technical journals.
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)	Has indexed and summarized 23 million chemistry-related articles from more than 40,000 scientific journals, patents, conference proceedings and other documents.
MEDLINE	Is a database of abstracts maintained by the National Library of Medicine containing over 11 million abstracts from 7,300+ medical journals from 1965 to present.
EI Compendex	Covers almost seven million records referencing 5,000 engineering journals and conference materials dating from 1970.
INSPEC	Published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). It contains 10 million records from over 4,000 technical journals, 2,200 conference proceedings plus books and reports annually from over 60 countries in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, computing, control and information technology;
Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI)	Provides access to information from more than over 17.4 million records covering more than 37.2 million patent documents, with coverage from over 41 major patent issuing authorities worldwide.
Pollution Abstracts	Contains almost 300,000 records on scientific research and government policies on pollution, including coverage of journal literature, conference proceedings, and hard-to-find documents.