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Scientific and technical information is not only a key factor of innovation but also an essential component of any research process. In today's fast moving environment, having access to the latest scientific information and research is all important. PASCAL (File 144) brings a wide range of scientific information to your desktop. In the following overview you will see how this database started, what it contains and how it can be useful for your research.
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PASCAL is a multidisciplinary, multilingual database known as one of the world's leading sources of life and physical sciences information. Produced by the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST) of the French National Research Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), PASCAL is designed to meet the needs of the scientific community. In addition, an important goal of CNRS is to evaluate and carry out all research capable of advancing knowledge and bringing social, cultural, and economic benefits for society. PASCAL includes a number of disciplines, French and European literature being especially well covered. Sources in the database range from international journal articles to dissertations to technical reports and conference proceedings. The file covers from 1973 to the present and is updated weekly.
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A bit of history describes how PASCAL got its start. Founded in 1939 by government decree, the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) is a government-funded research organization, under the administrative authority of France's Ministry of Research. In 1988, it was decided to create the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST), as a unit of CNRS, its mission being to facilitate access to findings in all fields of scientific research worldwide. For almost two decades, the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) has been designing and developing services to facilitate access to scientific information produced by international basic and applied research communities.
The PASCAL database was created in 1973. Significant dates as the database has expanded include 1997 when full author affiliations, including all information necessary to contact authors, were added to the database and 2000 as the number of detailed author abstracts increased to about 80 percent of the records, 90% since 2008.
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PASCAL covers core literature in science, technology and medicine with special emphasis on European literature. Because of its multidisciplinary coverage, PASCAL is especially useful when searching for documents on a topic at the interface among several disciplines and seldom covered in specialized databases. Several national and international specialized research organizations contribute to the PASCAL database. The chart shows the areas covered and the percentage of records for each discipline in the database.
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A few statistics provide more detail about PASCAL. The database contains over 17 million records. After reviewing texts from all over the world in 100 languages, PASCAL adds about 450,000 new citations each year. Over 6,500 major journals, technical reports, periodicals, dissertations, theses and conference proceedings comprise the sources. These are scanned regularly and approximately 3,100 in 2008 or over 90% of these were abstracted completely.
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PASCAL is a multilingual database. Any bibliographic reference in PASCAL will include keywords in French, English and Spanish. This means that PASCAL may be searched in any of these languages regardless of the original document language. German descriptors are also available for searching about metallurgy. Additional keywords are supplied by the author of an article.
Source language of bibliographic records in PASCAL includes 76% English, 9% French, 5% German, 6% Russian and a small percentage of other languages. Approximately 10 descriptors for each language are listed in each record. You will see these language descriptors in a sample article a bit later.
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This is a truly international database with coverage worldwide; a major strength being coverage of France and Europe. The chart on the right shows the percentage of coverage from different countries, such as the U.S. and Japan.
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Several national and international specialized research organizations contribute to the PASCAL database in the areas of automatic control engineering, construction and public works, biomedical sciences and earth sciences.
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Because of the broad coverage across disciplines, PASCAL is a good source for topics that fall between several disciplines. Specialized databases often neglect these subjects or focus specifically on only one aspect of the topic. Note the diversity of topics you can find in PASCAL—everything from pests in growing beets, an agriculture topic; to diet for controlling diabetes, a medical topic; to quantum mechanical studies, a technical topic.
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The following example illustrates the type of information you can find in PASCAL. An area of continuing current research is nanotechnology. This topic crosses a number of different subjects, including medical, technical, medical devices and more. Here's an article based on a search for nanotechnology. The record is shown. At the top of the record is the title in English. If the title has been translated, the translated title will also appear.
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Notice the list of authors and immediately under the list is detailed affiliation information so a searcher can locate them. The detailed abstract provides valuable information; and, of course, you have the journal information to obtain the entire article.
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The bottom of the record shows descriptors in English, French and Spanish to help you find other similar articles by searching in any of the three languages.
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In the new ProQuest Dialog, you can translate records from one language to another, in this example from English to Chinese with the click of a button.
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As you can see, PASCAL (File 144) provides unique information about science around the world with special emphasis on French and European scientific literature. You can try PASCAL as Dialog's Free File of the Month in February 2011. Read the story on the Free File in the February Chronolog and try searching File 144!
Make sure you are signed up for the Chronolog to see all the news at Dialog. If you have any questions, you can also contact the Knowledge Center by phone or email at .
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This completes our overview of PASCAL. Thank you for your interest in this unique science database and put it on your list to try for free in February.