About
The “Pascal and Francis Bibliographic Databases” site is an archive of the PASCAL and FRANCIS bibliographic databases produced by the l’Inist-CNRS between 1972 and 2015.
This site features a free access to 20,784,274 references of articles, conferences, books, reports, thesis, patents and maps, produced by the Inist-CNRS and its partners.
As multidisciplinary databases, PASCAL and FRANCIS cover the essentials in Basic and Applied Sciences, Technology, Biomedical Sciences and Human and Social Sciences.
Functionalities
The platform proposes to its users a trilingual interface (French, English, Spanish). Depending on the periods and disciplines, keywords and/or abstracts are also available.
Three search modes are featured: simple, advanced, expert. A search history and a search builder facilitate the formulation of complex queries.
The provision of the PASCAL and FRANCIS Vocabularies and Classification schemes allows to browse the databases content from thematics.
Facets and filters complete the search / browsing offering. To restrict the search to the content of one database, FRANCIS or PASCAL, just tick the corresponding filter after an initial search.
On display of a bibliographic record, it is also possible to relaunch a search in the entire corpus from certain clickable items (search by rebound).
Services provided
The site proposes the export of individual records in the Bibtex, Dublin Core, MODS, TEI and RIS formats. A simple list of short records in text format is also available from the list of results.
The PASCAL or FRANCIS classification schemes, can be exported either in their totality or at different levels of detail, in SKOS (RDF XML) format.
The site proposes an access to the full text of the document, whether free or paid, when it exists. In order to give priority to free access, the site queries various repositories in Open Access : ArXiv, Base, Europe PubMed Central, HAL Unpaywall. For the French public research establishments having a subscription to the COUPERIN group order, an access to full text via the Istex and Panist applications is also available. Other possibilities of retrieving the full text are also proposed via the Crossref and GoogleScholar services.
Technical aspects
The “Pascal and Francis Bibliographic Databases” site has been designed and realised by the Inist-CNRS. It uses the Elasticsearch search engine (fifth version).
The site is an adaptive website, consistent with the “responsive web design”, allowing easy reading and browsing on any type of medium. It relies, in part, on the WordPress CMS, adapted by the Inist-CNRS.
Metadata are expressed in a “MODS” (Metadata Object Description Schema) format from the Library of Congress, adapted and extended by the Inist-CNRS to include metadata not listed in the format.
