MathSciNet

Article summary

MathSciNet is a searchable online bibliographic database created by the American Mathematical Society in 1996. It contains all of the contents of the journal Mathematical Reviews (MR) since 1940 along with an extensive author database, links to other MR entries, citations, full journal entries, and links to original articles. It contains almost 3.6 million items and over 2.3 million links to original articles. Along with its parent publication Mathematical Reviews, MathSciNet has become an essential tool for researchers in the mathematical sciences. Access to the database is by subscription only and is not generally available to individual researchers who are not affiliated with a larger subscribing institution. For the first 40 years of its existence, traditional typesetting was used to produce the Mathematical Reviews journal. Starting in 1980 bibliographic information and the reviews themselves were produced in both print and electronic form. This formed the basis of the first purely electronic version called MathFile launched in 1982. Further enhancements were added over the next 18 years and the current version known as MathSciNet went online in 1996. Unlike most other abstracting databases, MathSciNet takes care to uniquely identify authors.…

Key claims

1. date of formation: 1982 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. The record states that the date of formation is "1982". What evidence would count against this claim?
3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1355982625