Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD) is a significant document dat
abase on Mainland Chain, which has been built by the Documentation and
Information center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. CSCD is the only citation
database with can be used practically on Mainland china up to now. The build upo
f CSCD as well as the publishing of CSCD's products offers novel and disti
nctive document retrieval and bibliometrics reserch tools to vast numb
ers of scientific researchers, scientific and technological management
officers and bibliometrics ressearchers, which will make profound effect on
the development of scientific and technical information services on Mainland C
hina. This article introduced briefly the building background of CSCD on
Mainland China, discussed, in detail, the building and application of CSCD, i
nclude the development couse, the basic situations of source journals and cita
tion data, the data processing methods of CSCD. The article also introduc
ed subject scopes, compilation rgulations, stylistic rules and layout, and
usage directions of printed and CD-ROM editions of Chinese Science Citation I
ndex which were published on the ba sis of CSCD data.