Global Change Abstracts The Swiss Contribution - SCNAT

4 Global Change Abstracts – The Swiss Contribution | Methods and Statistic
Concept and Methods
Global Change Abstracts: The Swiss Contribution
(GCA) is a compendium of abstracts for papers on
the topic of global environmental change. The
abstracts are written or co-authored by Swiss scientists
and other experts working in Switzer land.
The papers are published in one of the 6000 journals
covered by the data bases Science Citation
Index® and Social Sciences Citation Index®, which
are compiled by the Institute for Scientific
Information®.
A total of 447 papers that were published during
the period August 2007 – January 2008 are included
in this issue. These papers are classified according
to the following categories, which are also
used to order the abstracts in GCA (refer to the
Table of Contents):
1 Earth system process studies and
methodologie
1.1 Atmosphere
1.2 Terrestrial Ecosystems
1.3 Soil and Lithosphere
1.4 Cryosphere
1.5 Ocean/Fresh Water Systems
1.6 Energy Balance
1.7 Coupled Systems and Cycles
2 Past Global Changes
3 Human Dimensions
4 Mitigation and Adaptation Technologies
5 General Topics
The papers are also referenced by an alphabetical
list of authors and by scientific discipline
(as preassigned by the Institute for Scientific
Information®).
We use three different searches to identify the
papers in GCA, namely: (i) a search in both databases
mentioned above for the names of the principal
investigators and their coworkers contained in
the ProClim- Infosystem (about 800 names) or for
projects with Switzer land as a country of origin;
(ii) a search for additional Swiss papers that have
been published in a selection of journals chosen
from the Science Citation Index® based on the
themes they cover (using “journal catagory codes”
assigned by the database producer); (iii) a search
in the database Social Sciences Citation Index® for
Swiss papers in the social sciences that contain
one of over 50 keywords on the topic of global
change. ProClim- staff then scan these selected
papers to determine which are relevant for inclusion
in GCA.
GCA is available as PDF document only and is
distributed by e-mail. Please send your request to
proclim@scnat.ch. As a novelty, hyperlinks to the
full text are included (in blue color, sources of
the articles) whenever possible. So you can easily
find the scientific article on the web by clicking
on the corresponding link in the electronic GCA.
Searching for keywords is also possible.
You can also find all papers published in GCA on
the ProClim- web site at www.proclim.ch/
Publications.html. On this site you will find a
database including all Swiss articles of the GCAs.
If you are interested in ordering a copy of a paper
quoted in this issue, you can get further information
in the ProClim- database, for example the
address of the first author. A double click on the
selected article will show you more detailed information
not printed in the following document.
If you think a paper should be published in an
issue of GCA, you can send it to ProClim- and we
will consider including it in a future issue. We
hope that Global Change Abstracts: The Swiss
Contribution will facilitate the exchange of
information and with it the interdisciplinarity
among the global change research community.