Entering the millionth reference was awaited with excitement within and around SCIndeks team for quite some time. Regrettably, it is not possible to know the title of the golden reference, since references are routinely uploaded to the database, not individually, but in portions. The fact that the golden reference is unknown doesn’t mean it doesn’t  exist and couldn’t prevent SCIndeks team to mark the event by a small festivity in the National Library of Serbia, CEON/CEES partner in maintaining SCIndeks.

References are a sort of SCIndeks’ trademark. Under its previous name, the SocioFakt, SCIndeks was the first among known citation databases to offer references in full format, which happened almost two decades ago. SCIndeks is still a leader in exploiting information given in references. References in SCIndeks are processed more intensively than in any other known product of the sort, both in terms of number of  fields they are parsed into and in terms of the level of authority control, i.e. normalization of data contained in various reference fields.

Intensive processing of references as done in SCIndeks is technologically a highly demanding job. However, we find it worth the efforts, since references are the most valuable bibliographic source. They hide information offering many opportunities for both developers and the evaluators.

Thanks to intensive processing of references, SCIndeks is linked to more external bibliographic sources than the other known citation indexes. These include several leading disciplinary world databases, as well as the national OPAC, the Virtual Library of Serbia. Furthermore, SCIndeks is used, or can be used, in evaluation of more different research entities, such as scientific publishers and research conferences. Its normalized references ensure more efficient search based on related records. Finally, references titles, if made searchable, which in SCIndeks they are, are a most precious specific knowledge source. This is particularly so in countries such as Serbia, where international references make so called intellectual horizon of the local researchers.

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