Czech Citation Index - a new tool for the evaluation of the flow of scientific medical information in biomedical research

The citation indexes and their quality to connect citing and cited authors and their articles represent an absolutely new dimension of bibliographic services. The effort to create a database "citation index" similar to citation indexes/searching engines produced abroad (especially to the Science Citation Index available in the Czech Republic on Internet as Web of Science) on the national level, has led to fabrication of a demo version of the Czech Citation Index of biomedical journals. The basis for developing such a database has been the national medical bibliography "Bibliographia medica čechoslovaca" and its modified software "Tornado" (produced by AiP Beroun). The database contains about 15 000 records from 3 journal titles. For the reason complete volumes of 1999 and 2000 have been processed in order to verify the searching possibilities and the calculation of impact factors, immediacy indexes and another scientometric parameters for each individual title of journals. In frame of this project the aim has been to sustain the new ways of evaluation of research results and of the connectivity and compatibility of all related databases (i.e. IGA- Internal grant agency of the Ministry of Health, CEP - Central register of state-supported research and development and RIV - Register of the results of state-supported projects). The project also verified the necessity of changing the input processing of the national medical bibliography and of better observing citation standards by authors and publishers.

Author information:

Graduated from Charles University, Faculty of Philosophy in LIbrary and Information Science.
Professional career:
1972 to present - National Medical Library, librarian. Since 1978 head of the Department of Bibliography and Cataloging.
Professional activities:
development of the computerized national medical bibliography and maintenance of its outputs according to the latest progress in computer technology. Project and construction of the database of Czech -English version of Thesaurus Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Implementation of MeSH in cataloging and indexing practice. Implementation of the automated library system ALEPH in cataloging practice. Taking responsibilities of unification of subject analysis and indexing of biomedical literature and subject cataloging in the network of medical libraries in The Czech Republic.
Participation in the projects in frame of Program of the information network development in public libraries of the Ministry of Culture,(in the years 2000,2001) and Internal grant agency of the Ministry of Health (in the year 2001).