scopus and i using large information and citation databases for evaluation tefko saracevic, phd...

Scopus and I

Using large information and Using large information and citation databases for citation databases for

evaluationevaluation

Tefko Saracevic, PhDSchool of Communication, Information and Library StudiesRutgers University, [email protected]://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko

© Tefko Saracevic 2Scopus and I

Full disclosureFull 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

• 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


What you can’t find on ScopusWhat you can’t find on Scopus

Named after:

Chiffchaff

(Phylloscopus Collybita)

a small bird with great navigational skills


Definition of the central themeDefinition of the central theme

to evaluate (verb)to consider or examine something in order

to judge its value, quality, importance, extent, condition, or performance

to evaluate (verb)to consider or examine something in order

to judge its value, quality, importance, extent, condition, or performance


However …However …

• 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!

• 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!


Overview of Scopus

Elsevier effort to get into searching & combining ScienceDirect & Scirus (web searching)

Massive effort & outlay; big marketing development investment HUGE & undisclosed

Headed by Eefka Smit & a young, mostly Dutch team global operations:

Headquarters: Amsterdam; marketing: global; indexing: Philippines; computers: Dayton, Ohio, USA

Unveiled in 2004 new features unveiled constantly – innovative

e.g. mid 2005: added RefWorks; end 2005 Citation tracking; 2006 Author profiling & further analysis tools

Search engine licensed from Fast


Coverage Science & technology only, no (or little)

humanities 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


Coverage … Time covered:

Abstracts go back to 1966 References go back to 1996

While having gaps, coverage seems more comprehensive than any other single database

Also incorporates web search via Scirus 200 mill. web sources

Also strong in non-English & developing country sources More than 60% of titles are from countries other than

the US


Overview of other databases- for a few comparisons

Web of Science (WoS) 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 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


Reviews

Comparing Scopus and Web of Science 2005: http://www.charlestonco.com/comp.cfm?id=43 2006: http://www.charlestonco.com/comp.cfm?id=43

critical of Scopus gaps in coverage, particularly before 1996

but not clear why comparison of these two services 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


What can you do?

Subjects search with many capabilities to limit & modify, rank

Source search – journals, types of sources Author search with many extensions

– 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


What do I do? Use it as in a variety of roles &

evaluations, as a: researcher teacher journal editor mentor promotion, tenure, committee member;

administrator tool for keeping current; also:

for finding what and who did I miss who is leading an area

concentrate here

with implications


What do you see?

At first: Lots of features laid out all at once But, relatively clear interface laying out

capabilities Geared toward fast, intuitive learning & use

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


But lets get going ….

Live examples from

http://www.scopus.com/user: tsaracevic

password: I am not telling

or:

http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/


Starting …

search options


Use in research and citation tracking

Presently, I have completed but am updating & re-writing a comprehensive review about the notion of relevance in information science

For that: I did subject searching & identified & evaluated areas

of research I also searched for some key authors and did citation

tracking & evaluated contributions & trends including, of course, a vanity search

then I saved each author or subject search in a list


Fun part

Had fun tracking those that cited them that cited them …

Eventually got lost in the tracking maze – of course!

Well, lets take a look


Subject searchsearch selections


Search results

I found 66 articles about “relevance AND judgment” 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…


Searchresults

Using options after I got the results


Following a single author & article

Selected one of the most cited articles: 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


Selected articlevarious features


My 11 saved lists

after searching& citation tracking I create lists


Voorhees 2000 I saved in my lists various features


28 Voorheeschildren

various features


102 Voorheesgrandchildren

various features


then…

I selected and viewed the list “Mizzaro citations” to work on them further

selected them all clicked on citation tracking and voila!


Selected them all for citation overview


Interested in this

one


Follow-up on four articles;

Tombros was NEW for me!


Following a vanity but useful trail

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


Author selection &disambiguation

List of all 20 authors last name “Saracevic “–

first page

Choice


Author selection &disambiguation

List of all 20 authors last name “Saracevic “–

second page

Choices

List of all 5 “Saracevic, T” – all me


Scopus & I: without self-citations

This one

No. of articles in Scopus No. of citations

in Scopus


Scopus & I: with self-citations

No. of all citations in Scopus

977 all

-950 without

27 self


Web of Science (WoS)

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


WoS: subject search

search selections


WoS: subject search results

search results


WoS and I: my articles

No. of articles in WoS

analysis features


WoS and I: authors citing meN

o. o

f all

cita

tions

in W

oS

Author citing me most

Self citations


WoS and I: my citations

No. of all citations in WoS

analysis features


Dialog

Same vanity search Reminder: My access to Dialog databases

includes whatever years they have: Citation db coverage: SCI 1974- ; SSCI 1972 -; A&H, 1980-

Dialogweb I use is a command search powerful but not intuitive at all needs training or information professional

Well, lets take a look


Dialog and I: my citations

List of databases being searched

search command: expand on authors named “saracevic”


Dialog and I: search process

commands complex, thus screens not shown, except the final result screen

Briefly: 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)


Dialog and I: search process

S1: no. of articlesin those db

S4: no. of citationsafter removing duplicates

S3: no. of citationsin those db

S2: no. of articlesafter removing duplicates

S5: no. of citationsafter removing self citations


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

950

822

803

1082

1042


Tracking a single article

Barry C.L., Schamber L. (1998) Users' criteria for relevance evaluation: A cross-situational comparison Information Processing and Management, 34(2-3), 219-236

Tracked citations in Scopus And in Web of Science


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


and the winner is?

For Barry & Schamber 1998 article: Scopus: 34 citations Web of Science: 31 citations

Oh well … Were they the same articles? Degree of overlap?

Overlap: 27 documents (both in Scopus & WoS) Scopus had 7 that WoS did not WoS had 4 that Scopus did not

Scopus 34

WoS 31

277 4


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


and the winner is?

For Spink & Saracevic 1997 article: Scopus: 43 citations Web of Science: 40 citations

Oh well … Were they the same articles? Degree of overlap?

Overlap: 31 documents (both in Scopus & WoS) Scopus had 12 that WoS did not WoS had 9 that Scopus did not

Scopus 43

WoS 40

3112 9


To my surprise…

For my article I followed a bit on unique citations in each, Scopus and WoS: 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…


Editorial usesEditorial uses

• I use citation tracking as editor of the journal Information Processing & Management:

– find [good] referees – most important function for any editor• 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?

• I use citation tracking as editor of the journal Information Processing & Management:

– find [good] referees – most important function for any editor• 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?


Inviting refereeseditorial page for

inviting referees

gets me right into Scopus


For this particular paper in Scopus

I went to author search for first author 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 found authors that were cited a few times on the topic invited two to be referees


Citation versus subject searching

Each follows a different path for retrieval Studies show that each retrieves different documents

low overlap between what is retrieved As a rule, when doing serious searching and

evaluation I do both popular engines e.g. Google are useless for this

Citation searching/tracking also serves different purposes mapping of an area/topic and author also used fofr assessing impact


My preference:

Scopus easy & fast to use comprehensive many very useful features combination of several modes of searching

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


What is not in Scopus but I would LOVE it

Graphical display of connections add visualization, network maps

Longer years back Web of Science also has limitation on years depending on

subscription rate going back from 1994 costs gazillion dollars – Rutgers does not have it

Massive checking & corrections as needed check on what is missing in issues & adding check on citations and adding missed or deleting wrong

ones How about adding humanities?


ConclusionsConclusions

• 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!

• 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!

scopus and i using large information and citation databases for evaluation tefko saracevic, phd...

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