Transcript Scopus and I: confessions of a user

Using large information
and citation databases for
evaluation
Tefko Saracevic, PhD
School of Communication, Information and
Library Studies
Rutgers University, USA
[email protected]
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko
Scopus and I
Full disclosure
•
I have no connection with Scopus
– But: I am on Scopus Advisory Board & as such
have a free password
– but I have Scopus access through Rutgers University Library
and as Elsevier journal editor
•
•
I participated so far at one Scopus Advisory Board
meeting (Budapest) and evaluated their product
informally over phone conversations
I gave an informal talk about using Scopus at 2006
American Library Association meeting & at Rutgers
© Tefko Saracevic
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What you can’t find on Scopus
Named after:
Chiffchaff
(Phylloscopus Collybita)
a small bird with great
navigational skills
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Definition of the central theme
to evaluate (verb)
to consider or examine something in order
to judge its value, quality, importance,
extent, condition, or performance
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However …
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Evaluation has many components and
should use a number of sources
Information & citation databases are a
powerful source & tool, but one among
a number of others
Very useful
But use with skill & caution!
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Overview of Scopus
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Elsevier effort to get into searching
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Massive effort & outlay; big marketing
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& combining ScienceDirect & Scirus (web searching)
development investment HUGE & undisclosed
Headed by Eefka Smit & a young, mostly Dutch team
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global operations:
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Unveiled in 2004
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new features unveiled constantly – innovative
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Headquarters: Amsterdam; marketing: global; indexing:
Philippines; computers: Dayton, Ohio, USA
e.g. mid 2005: added RefWorks; end 2005 Citation
tracking; 2006 Author profiling & further analysis tools
Search engine licensed from Fast
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Coverage
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Science & technology only, no (or little)
humanities
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includes Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, Life
and Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Psychology,
Economics, Biological, Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences
Covers some 15,000 journals, 700 proceedings,
600 trade publications, 125 book series, 12.5
mill. patents
Incorporates wall to wall Medline, Embase,
Compendex, & many other databases
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Coverage …
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Time covered:
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While having gaps, coverage seems more
comprehensive than any other single database
Also incorporates web search via Scirus
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Abstracts go back to 1966
References go back to 1996
200 mill. web sources
Also strong in non-English & developing country
sources
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More than 60% of titles are from countries other than
the US
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Overview of other databases
- for a few comparisons
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Web of Science (WoS)
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Coverage: science, technology, humanities
origin in three citation databases
 Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index
(SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI)
 at Rutgers coverage only 1994-present - pricing reason - with
some 8,000 journals, plus patents & other databases – only
this accessible to me
DIALOG
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a very large supermarket – some 900 databases (db) in every
field and area, including citation indexes
Citation db coverage: SCI 1974- ; SSCI 1972 -; A&H, 1980 all accessible to me
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Reviews
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Comparing Scopus and Web of Science
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2005: http://www.charlestonco.com/comp.cfm?id=43
2006: http://www.charlestonco.com/comp.cfm?id=43
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critical of Scopus gaps in coverage, particularly before
1996
but not clear why comparison of these two services
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Scopus does many different things that WoS does not &
vice versa
both have citation searching but Scopus has much more
Scopus subject searching is much more comprehensive,
WoS citation searching is more comprehensive, but
Scopus citation tracking more usable for evaluation
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What can you do?
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Subjects search
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Source search – journals, types of sources
Author search with many extensions
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with many capabilities to limit & modify, rank
– e.g. as to citations to and from
Citation tracking
Integrated with getting full texts with library
Integrated with RefWorks, given library has it
Integrated web search
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What do I do?
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Use it as in a variety of roles &
evaluations, as a:
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researcher
teacher
journal editor
mentor
promotion, tenure, committee member;
administrator
tool for keeping current; also:
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concentrate
here
for finding what and who did I miss
who is leading an area
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What do you see?
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At first: Lots of features laid out all at once
But, relatively clear interface laying out
capabilities
Geared toward fast, intuitive learning & use
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and indeed it is relatively easy to learn & use
Results displayed in Last In First Out (LIFO)
order, but can be ranked or listed in various
ways
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But lets get going ….
Live examples from
http://www.scopus.com/
user: tsaracevic
password: I am not telling
or:
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/
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Starting …
search options
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Use in research and
citation tracking
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Presently, I have completed but am updating &
re-writing a comprehensive review about the
notion of relevance in information science
For that:
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I did subject searching & identified & evaluated areas
of research
I also searched for some key authors and did citation
tracking & evaluated contributions & trends
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including, of course, a vanity search
then I saved each author or subject search in a list
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Fun part
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Had fun tracking those that cited them that cited
them …
Eventually got lost in the tracking
maze – of course!
Well, lets take a look
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Subject search
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search
selections
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Search results
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I found 66 articles about “relevance AND judgment”
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then saved them in My List, so I can evaluate, use and
update them later
then I found all the citations to the 66 articles
Here is the results page
And then two author examples…
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Search
results
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Using options after I
got the results
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Following a single author
& article
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Selected one of the most cited articles:
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Saved in list as “Voorhees 2000” and did citation
tracking: who cited it?
it was cited 28 times (“Voorhees children”)
then I went on and found 102 articles that cited
Voorhees children (“Voorhees grandchildren”)
this way I evaluated impact of an article and spread
into various publications and areas
Well, lets take a look
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Selected article
various features
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after searching
& citation tracking I create lists
My 11 saved lists
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Voorhees 2000
I saved in my lists
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various features
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28 Voorhees
children
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various
features
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102 Voorhees
grandchildren
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various
features
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then…
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I selected and viewed the list “Mizzaro citations”
to work on them further
selected them all
clicked on citation tracking
and voila!
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Selected them all
for citation
overview
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Intereste
d in this
one
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Follow-up on
four articles;
Tombros was
NEW for me!
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Following a vanity but
useful trail
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Created a similar list of my own articles
Selected one on interaction & relevance
Who cited it?
Who cited them who cited me?
Discovered a number of previously unknown
articles
Well, lets take a look
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Author selection &
disambiguation
Choice
List of all 20 authors last
name “Saracevic “–
first page
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Author selection &
disambiguation
List of all 20 authors last
name “Saracevic “–
second page
List of all 5 “Saracevic, T”
– all me
Choices
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Scopus & I: without self-citations
No. of articles
in Scopus
No. of citations
in Scopus
This
one
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Scopus & I: with self-citations
No. of all citations
in Scopus
977 all
-950 without
27 self
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Web of Science (WoS)
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Same subject search
“relevance AND judgment”
Same vanity search
Reminder: My access to WoS through Rutgers
limited to 1994 – present
Well, lets take a look
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WoS: subject search
search
selections
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WoS: subject search results
search
results
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WoS and I: my articles
analysis features
No. of articles
in WoS
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WoS and I: authors citing me
Author citing me most
Self citations
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WoS and I: my citations
No. of all citations
in WoS
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analysis features
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Dialog
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Same vanity search
Reminder: My access to Dialog databases
includes whatever years they have:
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Dialogweb I use is a command search
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Citation db coverage: SCI 1974- ; SSCI 1972 -; A&H, 1980-
powerful but not intuitive at all
needs training or information professional
Well, lets take a look
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Dialog and I: my citations
List of databases
being searched
search command:
expand on authors
named “saracevic”
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Dialog and I: search process
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commands complex, thus screens not shown,
except the final result screen
Briefly:
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found my articles in all 4 databases (126 articles)
some articles are in more than one db, thus removed
duplicates (102 unique articles remained)
found citations to me in all db (1513 citations)
some citations are in more than one db, thus removed
duplicates (1084 unique citations remained, but include self citations)
finally, eliminated self citations (1042 citations without self
citations)
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Dialog and I: search process
S1: no. of articles
in those db
S3: no. of citations
in those db
S2: no. of articles
after removing duplicates
S4: no. of citations
after removing duplicates
S5: no. of citations
after removing self citations
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Comparisons of my articles &
citations
Scopus
(1996-
WoS
(1994-
Dialog
(1972 -
No. of articles
53
31
102
Total no. of
citations
Citations
excluding self
citations
977
822
1082
950
803
1042
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Tracking a single article
Barry C.L., Schamber L. (1998)
Users' criteria for relevance evaluation: A crosssituational comparison
Information Processing and Management, 34(23), 219-236
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Tracked citations in Scopus
And in Web of Science
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Cited 33 times in Scopus
I followed up on the citations – cited even in: Evaluating research
for use in practice: What criteria do specialist nurses use? Journal
of Advanced Nursing 50 (3), pp. 235-243
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and the winner is?
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For Barry & Schamber 1998 article:
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Scopus: 34 citations
Web of Science: 31 citations
Oh well …
Were they the same articles? Degree of overlap?
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Overlap: 27 documents (both in Scopus & WoS)
Scopus had 7 that WoS did not
WoS had 4 that Scopus did not
Scopus 7
34
© Tefko Saracevic
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4 WoS
31
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Tracking one of my own
articles
Spink, A., Saracevic, T. (1997).
Interaction in information retrieval: Selection and
effectiveness of search terms.
Journal of the American Society for Information
Science and Technology, 48(8), 741-761
 Again: Tracked citations in Scopus
 And in Web of Science
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and the winner is?
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For Spink & Saracevic 1997 article:
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Scopus: 43 citations
Web of Science: 40 citations
Oh well …
Were they the same articles? Degree of overlap?
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Overlap: 31 documents (both in Scopus & WoS)
Scopus had 12 that WoS did not
WoS had 9 that Scopus did not
Scopus 12
43
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9 WoS
40
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To my surprise…
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For my article I followed a bit on unique citations
in each, Scopus and WoS:
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WoS had one article that did not cite the original at all
WoS did not have five citations from JASIST – it had
other citations from that journal – these were in
Scopus
Scopus did not have one citation from Inf Processing
& Management and three citations from JASIST, it had
other citations from those journals – these were in
WoS
Oh well…
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Editorial uses
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I use citation tracking as editor of the journal
Information Processing & Management:
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find [good] referees – most important function for
any editor
•
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–
–
who did what in this area/topic, how cited
subject layout of the topic of the paper
tracking of author’s own work
self-plagiarism?
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Inviting referees
editorial page for
inviting referees
gets me right into
Scopus
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For this particular paper in Scopus
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I went to author search for first author
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he was over time at two instituions
published 7 papers, two on data fusion, but different
topics
was cited only twice, thus no use following citation
tracking
Then I did a subject search “data fusion AND
information retrieval” since 2004
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found authors that were cited a few times on the topic
invited two to be referees
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Citation versus subject
searching
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Each follows a different path for retrieval
Studies show that each retrieves different documents
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As a rule, when doing serious searching and
evaluation I do both
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low overlap between what is retrieved
popular engines e.g. Google are useless for this
Citation searching/tracking also serves different
purposes
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mapping of an area/topic and author
also used fofr assessing impact
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My preference:
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Scopus
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easy & fast to use
comprehensive
many very useful features
combination of several modes of searching
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use depending on need and task
useful for various evaluations
has holes, but EVERY database has them, Scopus
has fewer ones
helpful people around, easy to reach & communicate
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What is not in Scopus
but I would LOVE it
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Graphical display of connections
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add visualization, network maps
Longer years back
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Web of Science also has limitation on years depending on
subscription rate
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Massive checking & corrections as needed
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going back from 1994 costs gazillion dollars – Rutgers does not have it
check on what is missing in issues & adding
check on citations and adding missed or deleting wrong
ones
How about adding humanities?
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Conclusions
•
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Actually, I do not have any
But subject & author searching &
citation tracking beside being serious
business and useful for evaluation is
also fun!
• So have fun!
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