Automatic Extraction and E-Mail Delivery of Citation Data from SCI CD-ROM Database

Science Citation Index (SCI) is a key database used by the research community in Indian Institute of Science. As this database was not available for access on the campus network, its offline usage was sub-optimal. To improve its usage we developed a profile-based E-Mail alerting service called Citation Alert Service. Every time an update database disc is received, the system automatically delivers, to the E-Mail address of individual faculty, details of his/her recent research papers indexed in the update disc, and papers that are citing his/her publications. Key issues to be considered in the system design are unattended processing of the update disc, and E-Mail delivery of downloaded records. We discuss in detail the design and implementation aspects of the system. E-Mail offers a convenient, fast and in-expensive mode of operating profile-based alerting services.