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Scopus Content Selection Advisory
Board : the role of the Subject Chairs
and the journal review process
World-Class Scientific Journals – 2015 : Improving quality and expanding presence in
the world information resources
St Petersburg : date etc
Karen Holland
Subject Chair: Nursing & Health Professions & Education
Dr David Rew
Subject Chair : Medicine
Emeritus Professor Peter Miller
Subject Chair: Psychology, Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine
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An introduction to SCOPUS:
The work of the Subject Chairs
David Rew
Consultant Surgeon
University Hospital Southampton
SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board
Subject Chair for Medicine
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A brief history of SCOPUS
• SCOPUS origins in 2003 as a competitor to Web of Science
• For peer reviewed worldwide academic literature
• Large and diverse founding advisory board
• Rapid acquisition of (18,000+) titles by 2009
• Unknown numbers of applicant journals still outside SCOPUS
• Need recognised for a fair, systematic accession process
• New Content Selection Advisory Board recruited in 2009
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The 2009 SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board
• +/-15 Subject Chairs on the Main Board
• Wide, broad and diverse subject expertise
• Experience as Journal Editors / Librarians /Bibliometricians
• International perspective
• Independent minded
• Collegiate = able to reach a happy consensus from diverse opinions
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My own journey to the SCOPUS CSAB
• Consultant Surgeon since 1994 in UK National Health Service
• Associate Editor, Eur J Surg Oncol 1996-2002
• Editor in Chief, Eur J Surg Oncol 2003-2009
- Entered partnership with Elsevier 2003
- Set a Board Strategy based upon quality & readability
- Growth from 300 to 600 published manuscripts per year
- Growth from 6-12 issues per annum
- Growth in Impact Factor from <1.0 to 2.8
- Worldwide distribution on Science Direct
- 240,000 reported full article downloads by 2009
• Board Member, Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) 2008-2010
• Invited to join SCOPUS CSAB 2009
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The general work of CSAB Subject Chairs
• Adjudication on applicant journals through the STEP process
• Attend international board meetings twice per year
• Communicate by email on “hot topics” at other times
• Debate & inform Board & Elsevier on developments in publishing
• Undertake educational tasks, seminars
• Support for the growth & expansion of the Regional Boards
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The Brief of the SCOPUS CSAB Subject Chair:
To create a journal accession & retention process
which is
• Credible and Trusted (by all parties)
• Fair to all applicant journals
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• Effective and Efficient
• Clear and Transparent
• Supportive of all applicant journals: constructive feedback & advice
• Which is under continuous development & review
• Which is flexible & adaptable (eg for Regional Boards)
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A broader personal view of the Subject Chair role
• To bring transparency & openness to the work of the Board = Trust
• To improve international academic cooperation & understanding
through common standards in communication & publishing
• To protect the reputation & quality of the world’s academic work;
- Robust Policy on Publication Ethics & Malpractice
- Better understanding of the “predatory journal” sector
- Better measures of transparency for authors & readers
- New technologies for fraud detection
• To improve standards in the world academic literature through
education, feedback & support of editors & publishers
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The Scopus journal evaluation
process from the perspective
of the Subject Chair
Emeritus Professor Peter Miller
Subject Chair : Psychology, Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine
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What I Am Going to Discuss
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Pre-screening by Scopus staff
Key areas of journal evaluation
Detailed assessments in each area
Personal experiences with quantitative and qualitative judgments
How the final decision is made
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Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB)
• International group of 15 journal editors and librarians; all major
specialty fields represented
• Editorial role: evaluating quality of journals, making final decisions,
supporting decisions with specific feedback, providing advice to
editors on how to improve their journals, providing advice to Scopus
on managing the review process
• Scopus Title Evaluation Platform (STEP): quantitative system used
to evaluate journals
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Minimum Criteria to Qualify for Submission
• 2 years minimum
• Peer-reviewed content
• Published on a regular basis (have a ISSN number registered with
the International ISSN Centre)
• Relevant and readable for an international audience (for example
have references in Roman script and English language abstracts
and titles)
• Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement
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References in Roman Script
• Roman script, or Latin script, is an alphabetic writing system based
on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet
• Russian text or references based on Cyrillic script would not comply
with our requirements
• “brain disorder” versus “браин дисордер”
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Ethics Statement
• Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement required
• No specific wording suggested
• Useful resources: http://www.elsevier.com/editors/perk/what-iselseviers-position-on-publishing-ethics
 http://publicationethics.org/
• http://www.icmje.org/
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Important Ethical Issues
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Plagiarism
Collaboration
Originality
Fraud
Conflict of Interest
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Example of a Good Ethics Statement
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My Personal Experience:
Subject Chair of Psychology, Dentistry,
Veterinary Medicine
• All journals in these 3 areas are assigned to me for evaluation
• I can evaluate them by myself or choose to request other referees to
review them
• I make the final decision to include a journal into Scopus or not
• My role, as a CSAB member, is to help manage and improve the
selection process, make objective selection decisions, and provide
useful feedback to editors and publishers
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Key Areas of Evaluation
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Journal Policy
Quality of Content
Journal Standing
Regularity
Online Availability
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Journal Policy
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Convincing editorial scope
Type of peer review
Diversity in geographical distribution of editors
Diversity in geographical distribution of authors
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Journal Policy
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Aims and scope
Convincing and relevant to Scopus users?
Specific or too broad
Is it clear why an author might want to publish in this journal?
Example of poor journal policy: publishing all areas of science;
Journal of Scientific Information
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Example of a Good Journal Policy Statement
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What Constitutes “Adequate” Peer Review?
• Single blind peer review
• Double blind peer review
• Open peer review
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What is Questionable Peer Review?
• Single review by main
editor
• Very fast reviews: 2
weeks or less,
guaranteed
• New journal increasing
volume very quickly
• The case of the author
who served as his own
referee
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Judging Geographical Diversity
• Editors and Editorial Board: single institution, multiple institutions
within one country, regional diversity, global diversity
• Authors: single institution, multiple institutions within one country,
regional diversity, global diversity
• Which is best? – depends on the aims and scope and the subject
area
• Journal claims to be international; board and authors are regional
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Quality of Content
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Academic contribution to the field
Clarity of abstracts
Quality of and conformity with stated aims
Readability of articles
Check hypotheses and conclusions
iThenticate
Frequent problems: vague, descriptive reports; not adding to extant
literature; small sample sizes; not in line with the journal’s aims and
scope
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Judging Academic Contribution to the Field
 Good science?
• Unique contribution to the
existing literature?
• Merely a publication
outlet for one faculty?
• Publishing all or most
submissions? Acceptance
rate?
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Judging Clarity of Abstracts
• Extremely important for literature searches in Scopus or any
database
• Content: Is it a useful and comprehensive summary
• Language: Is the English language understandable and correct
(grammar, spelling, etc.)
• Abstracts extremely important for non-English language journals
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Journal Standing
• Citedness of journal: percentage of articles cited, number of times
individual articles are cited, how recent are the citations
• Editor standing: widely published, widely cited, recognized in their
field
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Increasing Citations: Acceptable Ways
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Review articles
Commentaries
Debates
Invited articles
Editorials
Special issues
English language website
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Increasing Citations: Unacceptable Ways
• Writing heavily selfreferenced editorials
• Pressuring authors to cite
the journal
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Regularity
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How many issues per year
How many articles per issue
How many issues delayed
A journal publishing 2 issues a year with only 6 articles in each issue
(5 year publication history; is it viable?; will it last?)
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Online Availability
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I usually check this first
Check content available online
How many issues per year; articles per issue
English-language homepage option available?
Quality of homepage; ease of use, how comprehensive it is
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Basis of Final Decision
• Scoring Overview: Low, medium or high in each area
• Qualitative judgment looking at the overall picture
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Final Decision
• Accept or Not Accept
• Specific reasons given
• Email letter to publisher and editor with specific reasons why
publication was accepted or not accepted
• If Not Accepted, specific recommendations on how to improve
(VERY IMPORTANT) – more similar to a “Revise and Resubmit”
than a rejection
• Reapply in ? years
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The Way Forward : working with
the Russian CSAB and developing
good practice in journal publishing
Karen Holland
SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board ( CSAB )
Subject Chair : Nursing / Health professions / Education
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Subject Chair role and the Local / Regional CSAB
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Scopus Subject Chairs and the Russian CSAB : working together
The Russian Board like all the other Regional Boards is now working with Scopus team to
enhance their country’s submission success
Evaluations undertaken by members of the Board are submitted along with the
submission to the Subject Chair desk top in STEP
journal
Current personal experience is that of undertaking a Double blind peer review
then contact
and discussion with a Board member on the decision for that journal .
This is very new and we
will need to ensure whenever possible that all journals being submitted to
Scopus evaluation
have an internal review
report attached to
the submission **
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Attend periodic Workshops when necessary or invited by the Russian CSAB such as the one at
this conference to share best practice and update on new developments
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We have developed a set of Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQ’s ) for journal submissions and the
role of editor which you all have a copy and will be found on the new Russian CSAB web –site **
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http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/scopus/content-overview#content-policy-and-selection *
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SCOPUS : How do journals get included ?
And most importantly how do they stay in ? In summary
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The Scopus Content Selection Advisory Board ( CSAB )
http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/csab/members
Selection system is called STEP
http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/content-selection
• Once a journal is accepted there is no long term guarantee that a journal will
remain in the Scopus database – Re-Evaluation of journals already in Scopus
by the CSAB Subject Chairs and their reviewers will begin soon
• The Role of the Russian Regional CSAB will be critical to the future
success of journal acceptance into Scopus
• Their contribution will also bring a quality assurance vision supported by
the principles of transparent Publication Ethics to Scopus content
• We wish the Board every success with their Project and offer the support
of the Scopus CSAB Subject Chairs to the work being undertaken for this
exciting future development for Russian Scholarship and Science.
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Resources for Editors : For information only
1. http://www.elsevier.com/editors
2. http://www.elsevier.com/ethics/home#journal-editors
3. http://www.elsevier.com/ethics/toolkit
4. http://publicationethics.org/
5. http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines
6. http://publicationethics.org/international-standards-editors-andauthors
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Спасибо!
Thank you & Questions
Look out for more developments from Scopus @
http://blog.scopus.com/
http://twitter.com/Scopus
www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence
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