The Journal Science Launches Science Classic

["Christopher Refice" <crefice@aaas.org>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Journal Science Launches Science Classic The journal Science, 
published by the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science (AAAS), announced today the official launch of Science 
Classic the newly digitized full-text archive of the journal that 
features cover-to-cover access of every issue from its first 
issue in 1880 through 1996. This unique new comprehensive 
interface makes it easier to search the journals entire archived 
collection.

The three-year digitization project was released in April 2006 
during which time AAAS provided inaugural discounts while this 
vast amount of content was uploaded to the Web site. The 
inaugural discount will expire on September 30, 2006.  The 
Science Classic back file includes the very first issue of 
Science published under founder Thomas A. Edison, and complements 
Science Online, which covers issues from 1997 until today. All 
articles from the back file will carry the Science Classic logo 
for easy identification.  Over 150,000 articles in high 
resolution PDF format will be accessible on the interested 
scientist's desktop, explains Beth Rosner, the publisher of the 
journal Science.

Every page of the back issue file has been scanned as a 
high-resolution PDF which offers sharp, print-quality text as 
well as optimized files for fast Web transmission.  The content 
of the comprehensive archives includes groundbreaking research of 
the human genome and the genes for breast and colon cancer as 
well as other original research, commentary and policy articles, 
news stories, letters, book reviews, association affairs, and 
more.  "AAAS believes it must provide members and customers with 
instantaneous access to everything ever published in the journal 
Science from one central location," says Deborah Rivera-Wienhold, 
the director of business operations at AAAS. "This complete 
electronic collection will improve the efficiency of our 
researchersone look, one feel, and one functionality in one 
common interface with the current version of Science Online, 1997 
to the present."

Science Classic is now integrated with the current content of 
Science Online and provides easy access to scientific articles 
fully text indexed and searchable. The complete collection of 
Science papers from Volume 1, Issue 1, July 1880 through December 
1996 is now accessible from the Science homepage: 
http://www.sciencemag.org/archive/

Science Online and Science Classic together provide one-stop 
shopping for all of Science, says Stewart Wills, the online 
editor of Science. That means that researchers can search the 
entire collection through one convenient, familiar search 
interface, and really dig into how a scientific concept has 
developed over time. And for all users, it's a window into some 
of the key articles and ideas that have shaped the last century 
and a half of scientific inquiry.

The interface offers a new full range of electronic research 
tools to streamline searching with current Science content: 
chronological searching, reverse chronological searching, 
date-limited searching, searching located under previous issues, 
each year separated by issue searching, and full-text PDFs and 
separate linkable referencing.  Each articles bibliographic 
citation, abstract and references are compiled into an 
interactive HTML file, a feature which allows dynamic linking to 
other Science articles, toll-free access to thousands of articles 
from nonprofit journals hosted on the HighWire platform, and 
finally to the primary source from for-profit journals via 
CrossRef.

AAAS plans on placing all of the back file metadata into 
CrossRef, the citation linking backbone for all scholarly 
information in electronic form; the Digital Object Identifier 
(DOI), a unique reference number assigned to every original 
article and research paper, adds another way to search the 
content.

Science has been a pioneer in providing online full-text access 
to scientific news and research since late 1996. Now, with the 
addition of Science Classic, users can get the rest of the pie -- 
instant, seamless access to the whole of the Science collection, 
from the first issue in July 1880 through the latest cutting-edge 
papers of today.  AAAS provides free access to all the summaries 
and abstracts within Science Classic along with free full-text 
access to Science articles cited within the reference list of 
each article.

A separate institutional site license is required to access the 
complete backfile collection. For further information, please 
call 202-326-6730 or e-mail scienceclassic@aaas.org .

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is 
the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of 
the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 
1848, and serves 262 affiliated societies and academies of 
science, reaching 10 million individuals. Science has the largest 
paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in 
the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The 
nonprofit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its 
mission to "advance science and serve society" through 
initiatives in science policy; international programs; science 
education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto 
EurekAlert (www.eurekalert.org), the premier science-news Web 
site, a service of AAAS.

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