zbMATH Open, formerly Zentralblatt MATH, is a major reviewing service providing reviews and abstracts for articles in pure and

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathemati ...

, produced by the Berlin office of FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure GmbH. Editors are the European Mathematical Society, FIZ Karlsruhe, and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. zbMATH is distributed by

Springer Science+Business Media Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 ...

. It uses the

Mathematics Subject Classification The Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) is an alphanumerical classification scheme collaboratively produced by staff of, and based on the coverage of, the two major mathematical reviewing databases, Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH ...

codes for organising reviews by topic.

History

Mathematicians

Richard Courant Richard Courant (January 8, 1888 – January 27, 1972) was a German American mathematician. He is best known by the general public for the book '' What is Mathematics?'', co-written with Herbert Robbins. His research focused on the areas of r ...

, Otto Neugebauer, and Harald Bohr, together with the publisher Ferdinand Springer, took the initiative for a new mathematical reviewing journal. Harald Bohr worked in Copenhagen. Courant and Neugebauer were professors at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

. At that time, Göttingen was considered one of the central places for mathematical research, having appointed mathematicians like

David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many ...

Hermann Minkowski Hermann Minkowski (; ; 22 June 1864 – 12 January 1909) was a German mathematician and professor at Königsberg, Zürich and Göttingen. He created and developed the geometry of numbers and used geometrical methods to solve problems in number t ...

, Carl Runge, and Felix Klein, the great organiser of mathematics and physics in Göttingen. His dream of a building for an independent mathematical institute with a spacious and rich reference library was realised four years after his death. The credit for this achievement is particularly due to

, who convinced the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropy, philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, aft ...

to donate a large amount of money for the construction. The service was founded in 1931, by Otto Neugebauer as ''Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete''. It contained the bibliographical data of all recently published mathematical articles and book, together with

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

s done by mathematicians over the world. In the preface to the first volume, the intentions of Zentralblatt are formulated as follows:

''Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete'' aims to publish—in an efficient and reliable manner—reviews of the entire world literature in mathematics and related areas in issues initially appearing monthly. As the name suggests, the main focus of the journal is mathematics. However, those areas that are closely related to mathematics will be treated as seriously as the so-called pure mathematics.

''Zentralblatt'' and the '' Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik'' had in essence the same agenda, but ''Zentralblatt'' published several issues per year. An issue was published as soon as sufficiently many reviews were available, in a frequency of three or four weeks. In the late 1930s, it began rejecting some Jewish reviewers and a number of reviewers in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

and

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

resigned in protest. Some of them helped start ''

Mathematical Reviews ''Mathematical Reviews'' is a journal published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) that contains brief synopses, and in some cases evaluations, of many articles in mathematics, statistics, and theoretical computer science. The AMS also pu ...

'', a competing publication. The electronic form was provided under the name ''INKA-MATH'' (

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for ''In''formation System ''Ka''rlsruhe-Database on ''Math''ematics) since at least 1980. The name was later shortened to ''Zentralblatt MATH.'' In addition to the print issue, the services were offered online under the name ''zbMATH'' since 1996. Since 2004 older issues were incorporated back to 1826. The printed issue was discontinued in 2013. Since January 2021, the access to the database is now open under the name ''zbMATH Open''.

Services

The ''Zentralblatt MATH'' abstracting service provides reviews (brief accounts of contents) of current articles, conference papers, books and other publications in mathematics, its applications, and related areas. The reviews are predominantly in English, with occasional entries in German and French. Reviewers are volunteers invited by the editors based on their published work or a recommendation by an existing reviewer. ''Zentralblatt MATH'' is provided both over the Web and in printed form. The service reviews more than 2,300 journals and serials worldwide, as well as books and conference proceedings. ''Zentralblatt MATH'' is now edited by the European Mathematical Society, FIZ Karlsruhe, and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. The database also incorporates the 200,000 entries of the earlier similar publication ''Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik'' from 1868 to 1942, added in 2003. As of January 2021, the complete database is accessible for free. Previously, only the first three records in a search were available without a subscription.

References

External links

*
Jahrbuch database
{{DEFAULTSORT:zbMATH Bibliographic databases and indexes Mathematical databases Online databases Publications established in 1931

History

Services

See also

References

External links