Abstract: To understand the status of standard terms used in scientific literature, we searched papers covered in the internet service system of National Science and Technology Library with the standard terms approved by China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies in both English and Chinese. Our results show that there is significant variance among English terms translated from Chinese, while Chinese standard terms are much more consistent. We also analyzed the status of terms in “Chinese Terms in Geography” used in scientific documents.

Key words: scientific terms, database, academic literature, search and statistics