Unit – I

LITERATURE SURVEY

Source of chemical information - primary, secondary, tertiary sources - literature

survey - Indexes and abstracts in science and technology - Applied science and

technology index, chemical abstracts, chemical titles, current chemical reactions,

current contents and science citation index. Classical and comprehensive reference

works in chemistry - synthetic methods and techniques, treatises, reviews, patents

and monographs.
Source of chemical information

Sources of information or evidence are often categorized as primary,

secondary, or tertiary material. These classifications are based on the originality of

the material and the nearness of the source or origin. This informs the reader as to

whether the author is reporting information that is first hand or is conveying the

experiences and opinions of others which is considered second hand.

Primary Sources

Primary sources are original materials on which other research is based. They

are from the time period involved and have not been filtered through interpretation

or evaluation. They are usually the first formal appearance of results in physical,

print or electronic format. Primary sources display original thinking, report on new

discoveries, or share fresh information.

Examples of primary sources

Theses, dissertations, scholarly journal articles (research based), some

government reports, symposia and conference proceedings, original artwork, poems,

photographs, speeches, letters, memos, personal narratives, diaries, interviews,

autobiographies, and correspondence.

Secondary Sources

These sources present an analysis or summary of primary sources. They often

try to describe or explain primary sources. They tend to be works which summarize,

interpret, reorganize, or otherwise provide an added value to a primary source.

Examples of Secondary Sources

 Textbooks, edited works, books and articles that interpret or review research

works, histories, biographies, literary criticism and interpretation, reviews of law

and legislation, political analyses and commentaries.

Tertiary Sources

Tertiary sources consist of information which is a distillation and collection of

primary and secondary sources. These are sources that index, abstract, organize,

compile, or digest other sources. Some reference materials and textbooks are

considered tertiary sources when their chief purpose is to list, summarize or simply

repackage ideas or other information. Tertiary sources are usually not credited to a

particular author.

Examples of Tertiary Sources

Dictionaries/encyclopedias (may also be secondary), almanacs, fact books,

Wikipedia, bibliographies (may also be secondary), directories, guidebooks,

manuals, handbooks, and textbooks (may be secondary), indexing and abstracting

sources.

Literature survey

A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources

relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a

description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the

research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an

overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to

demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.

Importance

 To define and limit of the research

 To place your study in an historical perspective

  To avoid unnecessary duplication

 To evaluate promising research methods

 To relate your findings to previous knowledge and suggest further research

A good literature review, therefore, is critical of what has been written,

identifies areas of controversy, raises questions and identifies areas which need

further research.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three

layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish.

Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new

interpretations built from and often extending than the primary studies. Third, the

awareness, conclusions, opinion and interpretations that are shared informally that

becomes part of the experience of field.

Narrative literature review

It is evaluation the literature and summarizes the body of a literature.

Narrative review also draws conclusions about the topic and identifies gaps or

inconsistencies in a body of knowledge.

Argumentative Review

This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an

argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already

established in the literature.

Integrative Review
 This form considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes

representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks

and perspectives on the topic are generated.

Systematic literature review

It requires more rigorous and well-defined approach compared to most other

types of literature review. Systematic literature review is comprehensive and details

the timeframe within which the literature was selected.

Theoretical literature review

This review focuses on a pool of theory that has accumulated in regard to an

issue, concept, theory, phenomena. Theoretical literature reviews play an

instrumental role in establishing what theories already exist, the relationships

between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to

develop new hypotheses to be tested.

Indexes and abstracts in science and technology

Indexes and Abstracts are very useful as they can save a lot of wasted time

tracking down articles whose title might sound useful but whose content can turn

out to be totally irrelevant to your research. They are primarily concerned with

articles from journals. Whereas both abstracting services and indexing services serve

as tools to identify, select and locate documents for use, abstracting services give

much more information to facilitate the selection process. The need for such services

is felt more in the field of Science and Technology (S&T) and hence they occupy a

unique position in the science communication system as far as current awareness

services and backward-looking search services for scientists.

Applied science and technology index

 Applied science - application of scientific knowledge transferred into a physical

environment. Examples include testing a theoretical model through the use of formal

science or solving a practical problem through the use of natural science.

Technology - making, usage and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques,

crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a

specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and

procedures.

 Aerospace - flight or transport above the surface of the Earth.

 Space exploration - the physical investigation of the space more than 100 km

above the Earth by either manned or unmanned spacecraft.

 Space technology - technology developed by space science or the aerospace

industry for use in spaceflight, satellites, or space exploration. Space

technology includes spacecraft, satellites, space stations, and support

infrastructure, equipment, and procedures.

 Applied physics - physics which is intended for a particular technological or

practical use. It is usually considered as a bridge or a connection between

"pure" physics and engineering.

 Meteorology - forecasts the weather

 Agriculture - cultivation of plants, animals, and other living organisms.

 Fishing - activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild.

Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting,

angling and trapping.

 Fisheries - a fishery is an entity engaged in raising or harvesting fish

which is determined by some authority to be a fishery. According to

 the FAO, a fishery is typically defined in terms of the "people involved,

species or type of fish, area of water or seabed, method of fishing, class

of boats, and purpose of the activities or a combination of the foregoing

features".

 Fishing industry – industry or activity concerned with taking,

culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or

selling fish or fish products. It is defined by the FAO as including

recreational, subsistence and commercial fishing, and the harvesting,

processing, and marketing sectors.

 Forestry - art and science of tree resources, including plantations and natural

stands. The main goal of forestry is to create and implement systems that

allow forests to continue a sustainable provision of environmental supplies

and services.

 Organic gardening and farming - a method of crop and livestock production

that involves much more than choosing not to use pesticides, fertilizers,

genetically modified organisms, antibiotics and growth hormones.

 Sustainable agriculture - farming in sustainable ways based on an

understanding of ecosystem services, and the study of relationships between

organisms and their environment.

 Communication - the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking,

writing, or using some other medium.

 Books - A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made

of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, fastened together to hinge at

one side.
  Telecommunication - the transfer of information at a distance, including

signalling, telegraphy, telephony, telemetry, radio, television, and data

communications.

 Radio - Aural or encoded telecommunications.

 Internet - the global system of interconnected computer networks that

use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP).

 Television broadcasting - Visual and aural telecommunications.

 Computing - any goal oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating

computers. Computing includes designing and building hardware and

software systems; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of

information; doing scientific research on and with computers; making

computer systems behave intelligently; creating and using communications

and entertainment media; and more.

 Computer engineering - discipline that integrates several fields of electrical

engineering and computer science required developing computer systems,

from designing individual microprocessors, personal computers, and

supercomputers, to circuit design.

 Computers - general purpose devices that can be programmed to carry

out a finite set of arithmetic or logical operations. Since a sequence of

operations can be readily changed, computers can solve more than one

kind of problem.

 Computer science - the study of the theoretical foundations of information

and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and

application in computer systems.

  Artificial intelligence - intelligence of machines and the branch of

computer science that aims to create it.

 Computer vision - interdisciplinary field that deals with how

computers can be made to gain high level understanding from digital

images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to

automate tasks that the human visual system can do.

 Object recognition - in computer vision, this is the task of finding a

given object in an image or video sequence.

 Cryptography - the technology to secure communications in the

presence of third parties.

 Human-computer interaction - the study of how people interact with

computers and to what extent computers are or are not developed for

successful interaction with human beings.

 Information technology - the acquisition, processing, storage and

dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a

microelectronics based combination of computing and telecommunications.

 Software engineering - the systematic approach to the development,

operation, maintenance, and retirement of computer software.

 Programming - the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging,

and maintaining the source code of computer programs.

 Software development - development of a software product, which

entails computer programming (process of writing and maintaining the

source code), but also encompasses a planned and structured process

from the conception of the desired software to its final manifestation.

  C++ - one of the most popular programming languages with

application domains including systems software, application software,

device drivers, embedded software, high-performance server and client

applications, and entertainment software such as video games.

 Perl - high-level, general purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming

language. Used for text processing, CGI scripting, graphics

programming, system administration, network programming, finance,

bioinformatics and more.

 Software - one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of

the computer for one or more purposes. In other words, software is a set of

programs, procedures, algorithms and its documentation concerned with the

operation of a data processing system.

 Application software - is program or a group of programs designed for

end users.

 Databases - is a collection of information that is organized so that it can

easily be accessed, managed and updated.

 MySQL ("My Structured Query Language") - worlds second most

widely used relational database management system (RDBMS) and

most widely used open-source RDBMS.

 Search engines - information retrieval systems designed to help find

information stored on a computer system.

 Free software - software that can be used, studied, and modified

without restriction.

 Operating systems.
  iOS - mobile operating system developed and distributed by Apple Inc.

Originally released in 2007 for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it has since

been extended to support other Apple devices such as the iPad and

Apple TV.

 Internet - the global system of interconnected computer networks that use

the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP).

 Computer industry.

 Apple Inc. - manufacturer and retailer of computers, hand-held

computing devices, and related products and services.

 Google - Google Inc. and its Internet services including Google Search.

 Computer security - Computer security, also known as cyber security or IT

security is the protection of information systems from theft or damage to the

hardware, the software, and to the information on them, as well as from

disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.

 Construction - building or assembly of any physical structure.

 Design - the art and science of creating the abstract form and function for an

object or environment.

 Architecture - the art and science of designing buildings.

 Electronics - the branch of physics and technology concerned with the design of

circuits using transistors and microchips, and with the behavior and movement

of electrons in a semiconductor, conductor, vacuum, or gas.

 Industry - production of an economic good or service.

 Automation - use of machinery to replace human labor.

  Machines - devices that perform or assist in performing useful work.

 Manufacturing - use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use

or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to

high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which

raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale.

 Robotics - deals with the design, construction, operation, structural

disposition, manufacture and application of robots.

 Energy - is an indirectly observed quantity often understood as the ability of

a physical system to do work on other physical systems.

 Energy development - ongoing effort to provide abundant, efficient, and

accessible energy resources through knowledge, skills, and construction.

 Energy storage - the storage of a form of energy that can then be used later.

 Nuclear technology - the technology and application of the spontaneous and

induced reactions of atomic nuclei.

 Nuclear power - use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and

electricity.

 Wind energy - is the kinetic energy of air in motion, also called wind.

 Solar energy - radiant light and heat from the sun.

 Engineering - the application of science, mathematics, and technology to

produce useful goods and systems.

 Chemical engineering - the technology and application of chemical processes

to produce useful materials.

  Computer engineering - a discipline that integrates several fields of electrical

engineering and computer science required to develop computer

hardware and software.

 Control engineering - a discipline that applies control theory to design

systems with desired behaviours. The practice uses sensors to measure the

output performance of the device being controlled and those measurements

can be used to give feedback to devices that can make corrections toward

desired performance.

 Electrical engineering - the technology and application of electromagnetism,

including electricity, electronics, telecommunications, computers, electric

power, magnetics, and optics.

 Mechanical engineering - applies the principles of engineering, physics,

and materials science for the design, analysis, manufacturing, and

maintenance of mechanical systems.

 Software engineering - the technology and application of a systematic

approach to the development, operation, maintenance, and retirement of

computer software.

 Fire fighting - act of extinguishing fires. A fire fighter fights fires to prevent

destruction of life, property and the environment. Fire fighting is a professional

technical skill.

 Forensic science - application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer

questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a

civil action.

 Futures studies - includes identification and forecasting of possible futures and

future events, and analysis of their ramifications

 Health

 Biotechnology - applied biology that involves the use of living organisms

and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields

requiring bio products.

 Ergonomics - the study of designing equipment and devices that fit the

human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities.

 Medicine - applied science of diagnosing and treating illness and disease.

 Hydrology - The study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on

Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and

environmental watershed sustainability.

 Information science - interdisciplinary field primarily concerned with the

analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and

dissemination of information.

 Cartography - the study and practice of making maps. Combining science,

aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can

be modelled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.

 Library science - technology related to libraries and the information fields.

 Military science - the study of the technique, psychology, practice and other

phenomena which constitute war and armed conflict.

 Mining - extraction of mineral resources from the earth.

 Nanotechnology - The study of manipulating matter on an atomic and

molecular scale.
 Prehistoric technology - technologies that emerged before recorded history (i.e.,

before the development of writing).

 Sustainability - capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how

biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. Long lived and

healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems.

For humans, sustainability is the potential for long-term maintenance of well

being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions.

 Transport - the transfer of people or things from one place to another.

 Land transport

 Rail transport – means of conveyance of passengers and goods by way of

wheeled vehicles running on rail tracks consisting of steel rails installed

on sleepers/ties and ballast.

 Animal-powered transport

 Transportation Systems

 Bridges - a structure built to span physical obstacles without closing the

way underneath.

 Public transport - transport of passengers by group travel systems

available for use by the general public, typically managed on a schedule,

operated on established routes, and that charge a posted fee for each trip.

 Vehicles - mechanical devices for transporting people or things.

 Land vehicles

 Automobiles - human guided powered land vehicles.

 Bicycles - human powered land vehicles with two or more wheels.

  Motorcycles - single track, engine powered motor vehicles. They are

also called motorbikes, bikes or cycles.

 Vehicle components

 Tires - ring shaped coverings that fit around wheel rims

Chemical abstracts

Chemical Abstracts is a periodical index that provides numerous tools such as

SciFinder as well as tagged keywords, summaries, indexes of discovery and

structures of compounds in recently published scientific documents. Approximately

8,000 journals, technical reports, dissertations, conference proceedings, and new

books, available in at least 50 different languages, are monitored yearly, as are patent

specifications from 27 countries and two international organizations. Chemical

Abstracts finished print publication on January 1, 2010.

Databases

The two principal databases that support the different products are CAplus

and Registry.

CAplus

CAplus consists of bibliographic information and abstracts for all articles in

chemical journals worldwide and chemistry related articles from all scientific

journals, patents, and other scientific publications.

Registry

Registry contains information on more than 130 million organic and inorganic

substances and more than 64 million protein and Nucleic acid sequences. The

sequence information comes from CAS and GenBank, produced by the National

Institutes of Health.
 The chemical information is produced by CAS and is prepared by the CAS

Registry System, which identifies each compound with a specific CAS registry

number, index name and graphic representation of its chemical structure. The

assignment of chemical names is done according to the chemical nomenclature rules

for CA index names, which is slightly different from the internationally standard

IUPAC names, according to the rules of IUPAC.

Products

CAS databases are available via two principal database systems, STN, and

SciFinder.

STN

STN (Scientific & Technical Information Network) International is operated

jointly by CAS and FIZ Karlsruhe and is planned primarily for information

professionals using a command language interface. In addition to CAS databases,

STN also provides access to many other databases, similar to Dialog.

SciFinder

SciFinder is a database of chemical and bibliographic information. Originally a

customer application, a web version was released in 2008. It can be searched for

chemical structures and reactions as well as literature in chemistry and related

disciplines.

The customer version is for chemists in commercial organizations. SciFinder

Scholar is for universities and other academic institutions.

CASSI

CASSI stands for Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index. The online CASSI

Search Tool provides titles and abbreviations, CODEN, ISSN, publisher and date of
first issue (history) for a selected journal. Also included is its language of text and

language of summaries.

The range is from 1907 to the present, including both serial and non-serial

scientific and technical publications. The database is updated quarterly. Beyond

CASSI lists abbreviated journal titles from early chemical literature and other

historical reference sources.

Chemical titles

The knowledge of current chemical literature is important. Current literature is

defined as that body of original articles published in any given month. Published

literature is the most widely used source of scientific communication.

Many libraries are subscribing to CT. However, research personnel are not

fully utilizing CT. CT is published twice a month and the first issue appeared in

January, 1961. There are approximately 2500 titles per issue taken from more than

300 journals (20% of which are Russian). The issues appear within two weeks after

receipt of the journals. The rapid publication of a large number of titles is possible by

the use of an IBM 704 computer.

Each issue is divided into three parts,

Part I. Keyword Index: keywords in each title are aligned alphabetically down

the centre of each column. A code appears opposite each title.

Part II. Bibliography: alphabetical listing of code (Part I) and first author's name

in addition to other authors, the full title of the article, and the journal reference.

Part III. Author Index: an alphabetical listing of all authors cross-referenced to

the Bibliography (Part III).

 The Keyword Index contains, in addition to the keyword, as much of the

remainder of the title as permitted by the computer. The remainder of the title gives

a good clue as to the nature of the article. The complete title will appear if it is short.

Consider a specific example. There is a paper entitled "Rate of the reaction of

gases and solid carbons." In the Keyword Index, the title will be indexed under each

of the keywords: Carbon, Gases, Rate, Reaction, Solid. The title will be coded TESN-

PA6O-RRG each of the five times it appears. The code designation consists of four

parts,

1. TESN-first four letters of first author's name.

2. PA-first two initials of first author.

3. 60-last two digits of year of original article.

4. RRG-first letters of the first three significant title words (Rate, Reaction,

Gases).

The following procedure has been found helpful in using CT,

(1) Set up an alphabetical listing of keywords which are of interest.

(2) Scan the Keyword Index and jot down in approximately alphabetical order

the first four letters of the code. Experience has shown that in most cases this

abbreviated code is satisfactory in locating the desired article.

(3) After scanning the Keyword Index completely, look up the code in the

Bibliography and record

CT is a tremendous time saver. The arrangement of the Keyword Index and

Bibliography are conducive to rapid survey and selection. The Keyword Index limits

the temptation to get sidetracked on "interesting" subjects as is often the case with

Chemical Abstracts (CA). CT reduces the probability of missing any given article by

(a) not being sectionalized as in CA or Current Chemical Papers (CCP), (b) having a

built-in check system, e.g., in the example given, the title would appear five times in
the Keyword Index and (c) covering more than twice the number of journals per

issue as CCP.

Current contents

Current Contents is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate Analytics,

formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is

published online and in several different printed subject sections.

Current Contents was first published in paper format, in a single edition

devoted only to biology and medicine. Other subject editions were added later.

Initially, it consisted simply of a reproduction of the title pages from several

hundred major peer-reviewed scientific journals and was published weekly.

Still published in print, it is available as one of the databases included in

Clarivate Analytics' ISI Web of Knowledge with daily updates, and also through

other database aggregators.

Editions

The Current Contents published editions are as follows,

 Current Contents Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Sciences

 Current Contents Arts and Humanities

 Current Contents Clinical Practice

 Current Contents Engineering, Technology and Applied Sciences

 Current Contents Life Sciences

 Current Contents Physical Chemical and Earth Sciences

 Current Contents Social & Behavioural Sciences

Current Contents Collections

 Current Contents Collections is issued as two different editions. These are the

Electronics and Telecommunications Collection and the Business Collection.

The Business Collection indexes about 240 journals and publications relevant to

business administration and management theory and practice. Coverage includes

the general subject areas of Business, Economics, Employee Relations, Human

Resources, Management, Organization, Marketing, and Business Communication.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Collection indexes about 210 journals

and publications relevant to research and developed technology that pertains to the

electronics industry. Coverage includes the general subject areas of Electronics,

Electrical Engineering, Optics, Laser Research, Laser Technology, Semiconductors,

Solid State Materials Technology, and Telecommunications Technology.

Science citation index

The Science Citation Index (SCI) is a citation index originally produced by the

Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The larger version (Science Citation Index

Expanded) covers more than 8,500 notable and significant journals, across 150

disciplines, from 1900 to the present. These are alternatively described as the world's

leading journals of science and technology, because of an exact selection process.

The index is made available online through different platforms, such as the

Web of Science and Sci Search. This database allows a researcher to identify which

later articles have cited any particular earlier article, or have cited the articles of any

particular author, or have been cited most frequently.

Chemistry Citation Index

The Chemistry Citation Index was first introduced by Eugene Garfield, a

chemist by training. His original "search examples were based on [his] experience as

a chemist". In 1992 an electronic and print form of the index was derived from a core
of 330 chemistry journals, within which all areas were covered. Additional

information was provided from articles selected from 4,000 other journals. All

chemistry sub-disciplines were covered: organic, inorganic, analytical, physical

chemistry, polymer, computational, organometallic, materials chemistry, and

electrochemistry.

By 2002 the core journal coverage increased to 500 and related article coverage

increased to 8,000 other journals.

One 1980 study reported, the overall citation indexing benefits for chemistry,

examining the use of citations as a tool for the study of the sociology of chemistry

and showing the use of citation data to "observe" chemistry subfields over time.