CINF 86

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CINF 86
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A History of Cooperation between Canadian
university chemistry departments, the Chemical
Institute of Canada, and publisher Archiving the
Canadian Journal of Chemistry, issues 1951
through 1997
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Lai Im Lancaster Brian Maurice Lynch
Department of Chemistry St. Francis Xavier
StFX University Physical Sciences
ComplexAntigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 2W5 Canada
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NOTEThis presentation and all others in this
symposium will be made available at the CINF Web
site as mp3 audio files and pdf or ppt files as
appropriate,generating a virtual symposium for
chemists unable to attend.
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Physical Sciences Complexopened September 2004
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The illustration in the previous slide is
relevant to our paper in June 2003 we arrived at
the idea that a project of electronic archiving
of our national chemistry journal the Canadian
Journal of Chemistry would be appropriate
recognition of the buildings opening in 2004.
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This proposal was endorsed by our university
administration, andalso by a vote of support
from the executive of our regional Atlantic
section of the Canadian Society for Chemistry.
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In August 2003 we were able to get endorsement by
the Council of Canadian University Chemistry
Chairs representing over 60 universitiesat
their annual meeting.
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About that time, the ACS announced the
availability of their complete journal archive,
and the RSC announced that their archive would be
completed by early 2004.
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ComparisonsAmerican Chemical Society (ACS)
Archive 3 million pages.Royal Society of
Chemistry (RSC) Archive 1.2 million
pages.Both archives are accessible free of cost
to all Canadian universities through CRKN Canada
Research Knowledge Network.Chemical Abstracts
Service has 30 million articles academic
searches at 90 discount off commercial rate
i.e. 0.20 US/file.All are Web accessible
and searchable.
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National journals fromsmall countries have
found it more difficult to competeover the last
50 yearsas illustrated by the following figure
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The CSC has around 7,000 members, compared
to the ACS total of 160,000.Our financial
resources are about 2 those of the ACS.
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Aside from our department winning a major
lottery,some drastic action would be needed to
achieve the archivingobjective!
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• The initial reaction from the Director-General of
  journal publishing at NRC Press in November 2003
  was almost totally negative -
• archiving was not a high priority and would
  probably not be considered for approximately four
  years late 2007
• tests on an NRC journal with high graphics
  content Canadian Geotechnical Journal were
  labor-intensive and gave mediocre results
• unskilled personnel such as summer
  undergraduate students could not be expected to
  produce archive files of adequate standard
• Therefore, thanks but no thanks for official
  sponsorship, but you are welcome to go ahead with
  an experimental attempt to archive the 1997
  volume......

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• In January 2004, a newly appointed acting
  Director-General contacted us with a completely
  different response, seeking our offer as a
  solution, not a problem and asking our library
  to supply some volumes of CJC for their in-house
  evaluation of archiving processes.

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• In the interim, we short-circuited archival
  scanning by using the services of a private
  company to generate JPEG files directly from
  scanning of purchased microfiche of Volume 75 for
  CJC. These are directly printable to PDF
  image-only files, in turn convertible into exact
  image files by a standard process built in to
  Adobe Acrobat Professional Software versions 6 or
  later.

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• We next turned to the possible automation of the
  metadata aka abstract data accompanying the
  fulltext content of the CJC volume. For 1997,
  there were approximately 220 papers the CA
  abstracts could be captured in cbib mode to give
  a typical display as follows

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An example of automated metadatafrom CAS
bibliography on 1967 CJC paper
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Apparent Problems

• CJC currently publishes approximately half the
  pages per annual volume of the peak year 1969,
  4825 pages.
• repeating previous slide for emphasis

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Effects

• For 1994, CJC articles were 13.5 of
• the total of published Chemistry papers with
  Canadian affiliations
• For 2004, CJC articles were 9.1 of this total

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Effects

• Total of papers abstracted by CA identified by
  publishing nation as Canadian decreased by 7.5
  from 1994 to 2004
• Total of papers abstracted by CA and identified
  by publishing nation as Australian increased by
  33 from 1994 to 2004

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It is standard practice to provide free access to
abstracts of electronic issues, and to charge for
access to the fulltext articles

• The Australian Journal of Chemistry AJC
• supplies author e-mail addresses with the
  abstract,
• inviting e-mail requests for reprints without
  requiring purchase of the paper

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AJC Abstract note e-mail address
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Another Example CMAJ
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CJC Example 1
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CJC Example 2
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CJC Example 3
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NRC decided that the automated metadata
approach was inconsistent with their requirement
that the electronic archives be absolutely
identical in format with the electronic issues
from 1998-current, and with financial assistance
furnished at our urging by CCUCC and CSC,
together with supply of hard copies from academic
libraries, developed a complete pdf image file
set in April 2006.

• Initially, the fulltext files were not searchable
• but automatic OCR converted these by June 2006.
• One cautionary note Google indexing of the
  archive content is not consistent!!

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The St FX Contribution

• Although we were disappointed in that we did not
  secure a contract for the complete archiving, we
  have been able to generate a departmental archive
  repository of over 600 chemical publications.
  Our initiative and pressure accelerated the
  archiving of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry by
  about two years.

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An Explanation

• My usual co-author is unable to attend this
  meeting she is working hard supervising another
  workshop see picture at right

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Assessment of Impact of Older Papers-Citation
Persistence

• 7 of 11 of my frequently cited papers since 1955
  appeared in Can. J. Chem.

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Some heavily cited CJC papers from Google Scholar

• There are approximately 12,000 entries of about
  20,000 papersfrom 1951 through 1997
• 60 are cited