Second Research Assignment

This assignment will introduce you to a citation database, specifically the ISI Science Citation Index. A citation databases allows you to evaluate and expand your research. By examining the citations, you can gauge the the professional response to an article. You can also use the citation database to lead you to articles which reference sources you're using, thus revealing new sources of information.

To use the ISI Science Citation Index, go to the GMU Library Database page and select Engineering and Technology.

In the Engineering and Technology section, select Science Citation Index Expanded. If accessing from off campus, use the "Off campus Access" button.

This will take you to the ISI Web of Knowledge homepage. In the pull-down menu at the top of the page, select "ISI Web of Science" and hit "Go." (Do not use the Journal Citation Index for this assignment.)

Uncheck Social Science and Humanities Citation Indexes; select Cited Reference Search.

Search for citations of Tim Berners-Lee's work. (The format is important; he is cited most frequently as "BERNERSLEE T*" The asterisk after the T is a wildcard character; it allows the search to find T, TJ, and Tim).

Many of the entries are duplicates. Weaving the Web, for example, shows up several times with slightly different abbreviated title and subtitles.

To locate articles which cite the work, select the entry by clicking the "select" box. Then click on the "Finish Search >>" box on the bottom of the page.

Answer the following questions

1) How many entries does Tim Berners-Lee have in the Index?
(use the "BERNERSLEE T* entry)

2) What single work has been most often cited?

4) Have his popular works (such as Weaving the Web and his Scientific American article) been cited in technical journals?

5) Locate five articles (not book reviews) which cite Weaving the Web. Print the bibliographic information from the ISI site.