85% of 2,000 end-users, recently surveyed by Elsevier, are satisfied or very
satisfied with Scopus.

These are the “Top Five” reasons why users are satisfied with Scopus:
1. Broad and comprehensive coverage of journals and other publications
2. User-friendliness
3. Ability to refine searches and the search options
4. Speed of Scopus to get to information fast
5. Citation counts

http://info.scopus.com/docs/scopus_user_survey_report_09.pdf

Editor’s note: this guest entry was kindly written by Gavin Moodie, principal policy adviser of Griffith University in Australia.  Gavin (pictured to the right) is most interested in the relations between vocational and higher education. His book From Vocational to Higher Education: An International Perspective was published by McGraw-Hill last year. Gavin’s entry sheds light on a new ranking initiative that needs to be situated within the broad wave of contemporary rankings – and bibliometrics more generally – that are being used to analyze, legitimize, critique, promote, not to mention extract revenue from.  Our thanks to Gavin for the illuminating contribution below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It has been a busy time for world institutional rankings watchers recently. Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education published its academic ranking of world universities (ARWU) for 2009. The institute’s 2009 rankings include its by now familiar ranking of 500 institutions’ overall performance and the top 100 institutions in each of five broad fields: natural sciences and mathematics, engineering/technology and computer sciences, life and agriculture sciences, clinical medicine and pharmacy, and social sciences. This year Dr. Liu and his colleagues have added rankings of the top 100 institutions in each of five subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science and economics/business.

Times Higher Education announced that over the next few months it will develop a new method for its world university rankings which in future will be produced with Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters’ contribution will be guided by Jonathan Adams (Adams’ firm, Evidence Ltd, was recently acquired by Thomson Reuters).

And a new ranking has been published, SCImago institutions rankings: 2009 world report. This is a league table of research institutions by various factors derived from Scopus, the database of the huge multinational publisher Elsevier. SCImago’s institutional research rank is distinctive in including with higher education institutions government research organisations such as France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, health organisations such as hospitals, and private and other organisations. Only higher education institutions are considered here. The ranking was produced by the SCImago Research Group, a Spain-based research network “dedicated to information analysis, representation and retrieval by means of visualisation techniques”.

SCImago’s rank is very useful in not cutting off at the top 200 or 500 universities, but in including all organisations with more than 100 publications indexed in Scopus in 2007. It therefore includes 1,527 higher education institutions in 83 countries. But even so, it is highly selective, including only 16% of the world’s estimated 9,760 universities, 76% of US doctoral granting universities, 65% of UK universities and 45% of Canada’s universities. In contrast all of New Zealand’s universities and 92% of Australia’s universities are listed in SCImago’s rank. Some 38 countries have seven or more universities in the rank.

SCImago derives five measures from the Scopus database: total outputs, cites per document (which are heavily influenced by field of research as well as research quality), international collaboration, normalised Scimago journal rank and normalised citations per output. This discussion will concentrate on total outputs and normalised citations per output.

Together these measures show that countries have been following two broad paths to supporting their research universities. One group of countries in northern continental Europe around Germany have supported a reasonably even development of their research universities, while another group of countries influenced by the UK and the US have developed their research universities much more unevenly. Both seem to be successful in support research volume and quality, at least as measured by publications and citations.

Volume of publications

Because a reasonable number of countries have several higher education institutions listed in SCImago’s rank it is possible to consider countries’ performance rather than concentrate on individual institutions as the smaller ranks encourage. I do this by taking the average of the performance of each country’s universities. The first measure of interest is the number of publications each university has indexed in Scopus over the five years from 2003 to 2007, which is an indicator of the volume of research. The graph in figure 1 shows the mean number of outputs for each country’s higher education research institutions. It shows only countries which have more than six universities included in SCImago’s rank, which leaves out 44 countries and thus much of the tail in institutions’ performance.

Figure 1: mean of universities’ outputs for each country with > 6 universities ranked

These data are given in table 1. The first column gives the number of higher education institutions each country has ranked in SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report. The second column shows the mean number of outputs indexed in Scopus for each country’s higher education research institutions from 2003 to 2007. The next column shows the standard deviation of the number of outputs for each country’s research university.

The third column in table 1 shows the coefficient of variation, which is the standard deviation divided by the mean and multiplied by 100. This is a measure of the evenness of the distribution of outputs amongst each country’s universities. Thus, the five countries whose universities had the highest average number of outputs indexed in Scopus from 2003 to 2007 – the Netherlands, Israel, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden – also had a reasonably low coefficient of variation below 80. This indicates that research volume is spread reasonably evenly amongst those countries’ universities. In contrast, Canada which had the sixth highest average number of outputs also has a reasonably high coefficient of variation of 120, indicating an uneven distribution of outputs amongst Canada’s research universities.

The final column in table 1 shows the mean of SCImago’s international collaboration score, which is a score of the proportions of the institution’s outputs jointly authored with someone from another country. The US’ international collaboration is rather low because US authors collaborate more often with authors in other institutions within the country.

Table 1: countries with > 6 institutions ranked by institutions’ mean outputs, 2007

Source: SCImago Research Group (2009) SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report.

Citations per paper by field

We next examine citations per paper by field of research, which is an indicator of the quality of research. This is the ratio between the average citations per publication of an institution and the world number of citations per publication over the same time frame and subject area. SCImago says it computed this ratio using the method established by Sweden’s Karolinska Intitutet which it called the ‘Item oriented field normalized citation score average’. A score of 0.8 means the institution is cited 20% below average and 1.3 means the institution is cited 30% above average.

Figure 2 shows mean normalised citations per paper for each country’s higher education research institutions from 2003 to 2007, again showing only countries which have more than six universities included in SCImago’s rank. The graph for an indicator of research quality in figure 2 is similar in shape to the graph of research volume in figure 1.

Figure 2: mean of universities’ normalised citations per paper for each country with > 6 universities ranked

Table 2 shows countries with more than six higher education research institutions ranked by their institutions’ mean normalised citations. This measure distinguishes more sharply between institutions than volume of outputs – the coefficient of variations for countries’ mean institutions normalised citations are higher than for number of publications. Nonetheless, several countries with high mean normalised citations have an even performance amongst their universities on this measure – Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, Finland and New Zealand.

Finally, I wondered whether countries which had a reasonably even performance of their research universities by volume and quality of publications reflected a more equal society. To test this I obtained from the Central Intelligence Agency’s (2009) World Factbook the Gini index of the distribution of family income within a country. A country with a Gini index of 0 would have perfect equality in the distribution of family income whereas a country with perfect inequality in its distribution of family would have a Gini index of 100. There is a modest correlation of 0.37 between a country’s Gini index and its coefficient of variation for both publications and citations.

Table 2: countries with > 6 institutions ranked by institutions’ normalised citations per output

Sources: SCImago Research Group (2009) SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report; Central Intelligence Agency (2009) The world factbook.

Conclusion

SCImago’s institutions research rank is sufficiently comprehensive to support comparisons between countries’ research higher education institutions. It finds two patterns amongst countries whose research universities have a high average volume and quality of research publications. One group of countries has a fairly even performance of their research universities, presumably because they have had fairly even levels of government support. This group is in northern continental Europe and includes Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Finland. The other group of countries also has a high average volume and quality of research publications, but spread much more unevenly between universities. This group includes the US, the UK and Canada.

This finding is influenced by the measure I chose to examine countries’ performance, the average of their research universities’ performance. Other results may have been found using another measure of countries’ performance, such as the number of universities a country has in the top 100 or 500 of research universities normalised by gross domestic product. But such a measure would not reflect a country’s overall performance of their research universities, but only the performance of its champions. Whether one is interested in a country’s overall performance or just the performance of its champions depends on whether one believes more benefit is gained from a few outstanding performers or several excellent performers. That would usefully be the subject of another study.

Gavin Moodie

References

Central Intelligence Agency (2009) The world factbook (accessed 29 October 2009).

SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report (revised edition accessed 20 October 2009).

The Elsevier TrainingDesk is the place where the publisher makes
available online trainings for major products like Scopus,
ScienceDirect, Illmuni8, etc., including videos from YouTube.

It includes now also trainings produced by the Elsevier’s customers
community…

 http://trainingdesk.elsevier.com/

A la Biblioteca de Farmàcia oferim i programem durant tot el curs acadèmic diverses sessions de formació sobre la consulta de bases de dades i altres recursos de la Biblioteca. Aquí veureu l’oferta d’aquest trimestre. Animeu-vos a inscriure-us que us estalviareu molt de temps en les vostres cerques d’informació.

Trobareu informació de totes les sessions programades a les diferents biblioteques del CRAI a la pàgina de formació d’usuaris, que és on  també us podeu apuntar a una o més sessions omplint el/els formulari/s que apareix/en al final de cadascuna de les fitxes de les sessions.

Recordeu que també podeu demanar cursos a mida per a un grup omplint el corresponent formulari via web o bé trucant-nos o venint a la biblioteca.

7 ตุลาคม 2552

สำหรับคนที่ชอบเรื่อง Rankings โดยเฉพาะ … ขณะนี้ SCImago Research Group ซึ่งเคยทำ SCImago Journal & Country Ranking (SJR) โดยอาศัยข้อมูลจาก ฐานข้อมูล Scopus ของบริษัท Elsevier ได้ออก product ใหม่ล่าสุด มีชื่อว่า SCIMAGO Institutions Rankings (SIR)

มีชื่อมหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล อยู่ใน list อย่างแน่นอน แต่ตลกดีที่เขียนชื่อ Institutions ของประเทศไทย ดูแปลกๆ เช่น

• อันดับที่ 497 Mahawitthayalai Mahidol
• อันดับที่ 555 Chulalongkorn Mahawitthayalai
• อันดับที่ 1136 Siriraj Hospital

ที่เหลือ download มาดูเอาเองก็แล้วกัน ที่เว็บไซต์
SCIMAGO Institutions Rankings (SIR) World Report

หรือจะดู powerpoint บรรยายโดย Vicente Guerrero (คนทำ SIR) ก็ได้ click ที่นี่ค่ะ

In last June, Elsevier has launched Scopus TV on YouTube, presenting short videos which mix marketing speeches with end-users testimonials.

Scopus TV: http://www.youtube.com/user/ScopusTV

A same channel for ScienceDirect: http://www.youtube.com/user/ScienceDirectTV

Fonte: Inmetro

A “International Union of Materials Research Society” concede, esta semana, o Prêmio “Somya 2009″.

Este prêmio bi-anual é dedicado a colaborações internacionais que envolvem mais de um continente e produziram um impacto reconhecido na ciência e sociedade. Entre os agraciados está o Prof. Ado Jorio, que, juntamente com outros sete renomados pesquisadores do Brasil, México, EUA e Japão, terá sua colaboração internacionalmente reconhecida na área de estudo e caracterização de materiais de carbono.

O Prof. Jorio vem atuando há mais de quatro anos no Inmetro, emprestando seu conhecimento científico à Divisão de Metrologia de Materiais, unidade que integra a estrutura da Diretoria de Metrologia Científica e Industrial, auxiliando a disseminar o reconhecimento internacional da competência científica do Inmetro. Desde seu ingresso no Instituto, o Prof. Jorio assinou mais de 20 artigos científicos com a afiliação do Inmetro em jornais de impacto internacional como Nature Materials, Physical Review Letters, Nano Letters e outros, incluindo artigos dedicados à importância da nano-metrologia, publicados no Boletim da Sociedade Americana de Materiais (MRS) e na “Encyclopedia of Materials: Science and Technology”(Ed. Elsevier).

O Prof. Ado Jorio ajudou a idealizar o primeiro Workshop de Metrologia de Nanotubos de Carbono, entitulado “Internacional Workshop on Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality of Nanotubes – MSIN”, uma conferência que ganhou credibilidade internacional e já está na sua quarta edição (MSON07 – Brasil, MSIN08 – França, MSON09 – China, MSIN10 – Canadá), todas sob coordenação do Inmetro, e tem representado a Autarquia junto aos organismos internacionais envolvidos na nano-metrologia, como a ISO e o VAMAS.

Em reconhecimento ao impacto de sua produção científica (mais de 100 artigos com mais de 5.500 citações), o Prof. Jorio, estará, também, na próxima semana, sendo agraciado com o Prêmio Scopus Brasil (Ed. Elsevier).

Comentário:

Pois é! Mais um brasileiro reconhecido internacionalmente pelo seu trabalho, certamente feito com paixão e dedicação típicas dos profissionais de excelência. Pouco ouvimos falar desses homens e mulheres que elevam o nosso país ao topo de suas áreas de atuação. O Prof. Jorio é, sem tirar o brilho de seu mérito, só mais um que conquistou destaque e reconhecimento lá fora. E aqui? Aqui, o reconhecimento vem geralmente após a vitória no exterior, infelizmente. Desde Santos Dummond tem sido assim, pelo que se sabe…

Devemos ter orgulho de nossos profissionais que se empenham e se destacam em suas áreas de atuação, incentivando-os e apoiando aqui mesmo suas pesquisas e seu desenvolvimento. Como o Prof. Jorio, o Brasil tem muitas mentes brilhantes!

A la Biblioteca de Física i Química  oferim trimestralment, durant tot el curs acadèmic, diverses sessions de formació sobre bases de dades i altres recursos de la Biblioteca.

Aquest trimestre les sessions comencen el 7 d’octubre.

La principal novetat són els cursos sobre la base de dades multidisciplinària Scopus.

Trobareu informació de totes les sessions programades a la pàgina de formació d’usuaris del CRAI. Podeu apuntar-vos mitjançant  el formulari que apareix al final de cadascuna de les fitxes de les sessions.

Recordeu que també podeu demanar cursos a mida via web o bé trucant o anant personalment a la vostra biblioteca.

SCImago Research Group (SRG) anuncia la publicación  del Informe Mundial 2009 del ranking de las instituciones de SCImago. El informe muestra un ranking de las 2.000 instituciones dedicadas a la investigación con mayor producción científica de todo el mundo y analiza su rendimiento investigador sobre 4 indicadores globales de producción (criterio de ordenación del listado), colaboración e impacto científico.

El informe, en PDF se puede descargar en:  http://www.scimagoir.com

A non-objective (because done by an Elsevier guy) comparison of scopus
Versus WoS

 http://www.slideshare.net/galih5/web-of-science-scopus

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organisation committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature freely accessible to everyone via open access publishing. As recently announced they have just published the first article-level metrics (e.g. web server logs and related information) for all articles in their library. This is novel, interesting and potentially useful data, not currently made publicly available by other publishers. Here is a  selection of some of the data, taken from the full dataset here (large file), which includes the “top ten” papers by viewing statistics.

Article level metrics for some papers published in PLoS (August 2009)

*The rank is based on the 12,549 papers for which viewing data (combined usage of HTML + PDF + XML) are available.

**Citation counts are via PubMedCentral (data from CrossRef and Scopus is also provided, see Bora’s comments and commentary at Blue Lab Coats.)

Science is not a popularity contest but…

Analysing this data is not straightforward. Some highly-viewed articles are never cited (reviews, editorial, essays, opinion, etc). Likewise, popularity and importance are not the same thing. Some articles get lots of citations but few views, which suggests that people are not actually reading the papers them before citing them. As described on the PLoS website article-level-metrics.plos.org:

“When looking at Article-Level Metrics for the first time bear the following points in mind:

• Online usage is dependent on the article type, the age of the article, and the subject area(s) it is in. Therefore you should be aware of these effects when considering the performance of any given article.
• Older articles normally have higher usage than younger ones simply because the usage has had longer to accumulate. Articles typically have a peak in their usage in the first 3 months and usage then levels off after that.
• Spikes of usage can be caused by media coverage, usage by large numbers of people, out of control download scripts or any number of other reasons. Without a detailed look at the raw usage logs it is often impossible to tell what the reason is and so we encourage you to regard usage data as indicative of trends, rather than as an absolute measure for any given article.
• We currently have missing usage data for some of our articles, but we are working to fill the gaps. Primarily this affects those articles published before June 17th, 2005.
• Newly published articles do not accumulate usage data instantaneously but require a day or two before data are shown.
• Article citations as recorded by the Scopus database are sometimes undercounted because there are two records in the database for the same article. We’re working with Scopus to correct this issue.
• All metrics will accrue over time (and some, such as citations, will take several years to accrue). Therefore, recent articles may not show many metrics (other than online usage, which accrues from day one). ”

So all the usual caveats apply when using this bibliometric data. Despite the limitations, it is more revealing than the useful (but simplistic) “highly accesssed” papers at BioMedCentral, which doesn’t always give full information on what “highly” actually means next to each published article. It will be interesting to see if other publishers now follow the lead of PLoS and BioMed Central and also publish their usage data combined with other bibliometric indicators such as blog coverage. For authors publishing with PLoS, this data has an added personal dimension too, it is handy to see how many views your paper has.

As paying customers of the services that commercial publishers provide, should scientists and their funders be demanding more of this kind of information in the future? I reckon they should. You have to wonder, why these kind of innovations have taken so long to happen, but they are a welcome addition.

[More commentary on this post over at friendfeed.]

References

1. Ioannidis, J. (2005). Why Most Published Research Findings Are False PLoS Medicine, 2 (8) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
2. Kirsch, I., Deacon, B., Huedo-Medina, T., Scoboria, A., Moore, T., & Johnson, B. (2008). Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration PLoS Medicine, 5 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045
3. Lacasse, J., & Leo, J. (2005). Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature PLoS Medicine, 2 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392
4. Levy, S., Sutton, G., Ng, P., Feuk, L., Halpern, A., Walenz, B., Axelrod, N., Huang, J., Kirkness, E., Denisov, G., Lin, Y., MacDonald, J., Pang, A., Shago, M., Stockwell, T., Tsiamouri, A., Bafna, V., Bansal, V., Kravitz, S., Busam, D., Beeson, K., McIntosh, T., Remington, K., Abril, J., Gill, J., Borman, J., Rogers, Y., Frazier, M., Scherer, S., Strausberg, R., & Venter, J. (2007). The Diploid Genome Sequence of an Individual Human PLoS Biology, 5 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050254
5. Holy, T., & Guo, Z. (2005). Ultrasonic Songs of Male Mice PLoS Biology, 3 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030386
6. Franzen, J., Gingerich, P., Habersetzer, J., Hurum, J., von Koenigswald, W., & Smith, B. (2009). Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology PLoS ONE, 4 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
7. The PLoS Medicine Editors (2006). The Impact Factor Game PLoS Medicine, 3 (6) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030291
8. Voight, B., Kudaravalli, S., Wen, X., & Pritchard, J. (2006). A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome PLoS Biology, 4 (3) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040072
9. Hagmann, P., Cammoun, L., Gigandet, X., Meuli, R., Honey, C., Wedeen, V., & Sporns, O. (2008). Mapping the Structural Core of Human Cerebral Cortex PLoS Biology, 6 (7) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060159
10. Bourne, P. (2005). Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published PLoS Computational Biology, 1 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010057
11. Lawrence, P. (2006). Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science PLoS Biology, 4 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040019
12. Hull, D., Pettifer, S., & Kell, D. (2008). Defrosting the Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools for the Next Generation Web PLoS Computational Biology, 4 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000204
13. Beltrao, P., & Serrano, L. (2007). Specificity and Evolvability in Eukaryotic Protein Interaction Networks PLoS Computational Biology, 3 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030025
14. Beltrao, P., & Serrano, L. (2005). Comparative Genomics and Disorder Prediction Identify Biologically Relevant SH3 Protein Interactions PLoS Computational Biology, 1 (3) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010026
15. Ho, B., & Dill, K. (2006). Folding Very Short Peptides Using Molecular Dynamics PLoS Computational Biology, 2 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020027
16. Saunders, N., Beltrão, P., Jensen, L., Jurczak, D., Krause, R., Kuhn, M., & Wu, S. (2009). Microblogging the ISMB: A New Approach to Conference Reporting PLoS Computational Biology, 5 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000263
17. Ho, B., & Agard, D. (2009). Probing the Flexibility of Large Conformational Changes in Protein Structures through Local Perturbations PLoS Computational Biology, 5 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000343
18. Wolschin, F., & Gadau, J. (2009). Deciphering Proteomic Signatures of Early Diapause in Nasonia PLoS ONE, 4 (7) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006394

…what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause

Thomson, in a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reckon there ain’t nowt wrong with the Journal Impact Factor:

The impact factor has had success and utility as a journal metric due to its concentration on a simple calculation based on data that are fully visible in the Web of Science. These examples based on citable (counted) items indexed in 2000 and 2005 suggest that the current approach for identification of citable items in the impact factor denominator is accurate and consistent.

Well, they would say that.

And they might well be right, and you and I and Thomson Reuters might argue the point endlessly. But there are a number of problems with any citation-based metric, and a pretty fundamental one was highlighted (coincidentally?) in the same issue of JAMA.

Looking at thre general medical journals, Abhaya Kulkarni at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (shout out to my friend Ricardipus) and co. found that three different ways of counting citations come up with three very different numbers.

Cutting to the chase, Web of Science counted about 20% fewer citations than Scopus or Google Scholar. The reasons for this are not totally clear, but are probably due to the latter two being of wider scope (no pun intended). Scopus, for example, looks at ~15,000 journals compared with Web of Science’s ten thousand. Why? The authors say that Web of Science ‘emphasized the quality of its content coverage’: which in English means it doesn’t look at non-English publications, or those from outside the US and (possibly) Europe, or other citation sources such as books and conference proceedings. And that’s before we even start thinking about minimal citable units; or non-citable outputs; or whether blogs should count as one-fiftieth of a peer-reviewed paper.

Presumably some of the discrepancy is due to removal of self-cites, which strikes me as being just as unfair: my own output shouldn’t count for less simply because I’m building on it. It’s also difficult to know how to deal with the mobility of sciences: do you only look at the last author? or the first? I don’t know how you make that one work at all, to be honest.

That aside, I think curation of citation metrics is necessary: Kulkarni et al. report that fully two percent of citations in Google Scholar didn’t, actually, cite what they claimed to. That is a worrying statistic when you realize that people’s jobs are on the line. You have to get this right, guys.

But it’d be nice if we could all agree on the numbers to start with.

Postscript

The thought of throwing out the Journal Impact Factor is, actually, a scary one (not least, presumably, to Thomson Reuters) because we’re all familiar with it. But as the REF looms and scientists’ careers and dreams are increasingly on the line, we have to ask whether we’re doing the right thing. I’m not at all convinced by the ‘Churchill’ argument—that there’s nothing better—as there’s too much at stake. Shall we chicken out, and

… rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

From yesterday’s JAMA, two articles of interest to medical information professionals:

Comparisons of Citations in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for Articles Published in General Medical Journals
Abhaya V. Kulkarni; Brittany Aziz; Iffat Shams; Jason W. Busse
JAMA. 2009;302(10):1092-1096.

The Journal Impact Factor Denominator: Defining Citable (Counted) Items
Marie E. McVeigh; Stephen J. Mann
JAMA. 2009;302(10):1107-1109.

Fa uns mesos les notícies del CRAI van informar de la nova subscripció a la base de dades SCOPUS.

La novetat ara és que la base de dades ha ampliat la seva cobertura en Arts i Humanitats. Us reproduïm aquí la notícia:

“Des del passat mes de juny, hi ha disponibles a la base de dades SCOPUS més de 1.450 nous títols en Literatura, Història i Arts Visuals, entre d’altres disciplines de les Arts i Humanitats.

Amb aquesta addició s’ha duplicat pràcticament el contingut de la base de dades. Els usuaris de SCOPUS es beneficiaran a partir d’ara amb l’accés a una major quantitat d’articles procedents de gairebé 3.500 publicacions internacionals d’Arts i Humanitats d’alta qualitat que daten de l’any 2002 i que inclouen temes molt diversos com són Educació, Història, Psicologia del desenvolupament educacional i social, Literatura i teoria literària o Arquitectura i disseny.”

I de la notícia anterior:

“SCOPUS és una eina produïda per Elsevier que recull 15.000 publicacions de més de 4.000 editorials internacionals. Les disciplines que cobreix són: Química, Física, Matemàtiques, Enginyeria, Ciències de la salut, Ciències socials, Psicologia, Economia, Biologia, Agricultura i Ciències del medi ambient.

Aquest important recurs aplega un 80% de les publicacions internacionals revisades per especialistes amb una actualització setmanal. Des de SCOPUS es pot accedir directament al text complet dels articles de les publicacions subscrites per la UB.

D’altra banda, SCOPUS permet conèixer el nombre de vegades que un article ha estat citat d’una manera similar al Web of Science, així com cercar recursos web i patents a través del seu motor de cerca Scirus.”

Please note that ScienceDirect, Scopus and The Admin Tool will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance for approximately 7.5 hours from 18:30 Saturday, 29 August to 02:00 GMT Sunday, 30 August.

ScienceDirect apologises for the inconvenience.

18 ส.ค. 62

บริษัท Elsevier ผู้ผลิตฐานข้อมูล ScienceDirect และ Scopus เป็นบริษัทหนึ่งที่มีกลยุทธ์การตลาดที่เก่งมาก … เขามีโครงการลูกค้าสัมพันธ์ สำหรับรับฟังความคิดเห็นจากลูกค้า ที่เรียกว่า “Development Partner Program” … สมาชิกกลุ่มเป็นบรรณารักษ์และนักวิจัยจากมหาวิทยาลัยและสถาบันต่างๆ จากทั่วโลก จำนวนประมาณ 30 แห่ง

มีรายชื่ออยู่ที่นี่ค่ะ http://info.scopus.com/detail/involved/development

ตัวเองเป็น Development Partner ของโครงการนี้ด้วย… เมื่อวานนี้เขามาถ่ายวิดีโอสัมภาษณ์ประสบการณ์ในการใช้ Scopus และ Tips ที่อยากจะแนะนำให้คนอื่นใช้บ้าง ก็เลยนำเสนอไป 4 Tips คือ Scopus HTML Feed, RSS Feed, Affiliation Search และ Journal Analyzer โดยยกตัวอย่างการสืบค้นผลงานวิจัยของมหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล ให้พูด 2 รอบ เป็นภาษาอังกฤษ กับภาษาประจำชาติ … เห็นว่าจะเอาไปทำ 2-minute video ในรายการ ScopusTV บน YouTube

… ทำตัวเหมือน presenter ฐานข้อมูล Scopus ยังไงก็ไม่รู้ แต่ก็ถือว่าประชาสัมพันธ์ประเทศและมหาวิทยาลัยไปก็แล้วกัน

ที่น่าตื่นเต้นกว่าการสัมภาษณ์ คือ กล้องถ่ายวิดิโอของเขา เป็น Flip Video Camcorder ตัวเล็กเท่าโทรศัพท์มือถือ มีขาตั้งเล็กๆ ไม่ให้ภาพสั่น ถ่ายเสร็จเอาเสียบเข้ากับ Notebook ดูได้เลย … ภาพชัดมาก ลืมกล้องถ่ายวิดิโอตัวใหญ่ๆ หรือกล้อง HandyCam ไปได้เลย .. เห็นว่าราคาที่อเมริกาประมาณ US$200 ที่สิงคโปร์ยังไม่มีขาย … คงต้องรอสักพักจึงจะมีโอกาสได้ซื้อมาเล่นบ้าง … โอ้ย อยากได้จัง

Waarom lukt het nog steeds niet de diakritische tekens uit Scopus goed in te lezen in Reference Manager?

Ik mopperde er al eerder over, en kreeg toen eigenlijk nul op het rekest.  Je zou toch denken dat dat inmiddels is opgelost, maar dat is niet zo. Scopus heeft nu in de ‘help’ het zinnetje toegevoegd:

Older versions of EndNote, ProCite and Reference Manger are not supported because records are using UTF-8 encoding.

Kijk, dat geeft aan waar het probleem zit. ANSI (ASCI)  was eigenlijk lang de standaard voor de tekensets (letters en cijfers) maar ik zie dat dat overal  steeds meer omgezet wordt naar Unicode (of UFT-8). Voor de gewone letters en cijfers is dat niet zo’n probleem, omdat de eerste 256 karakters hetzelfde zijn, maar voor de diacrieten maakt het wel uit.

Scopus biedt nu de mogelijkheid tot ‘Direct export” en dat is heel plezierig: een zoekactie lees je zo meteen in een RefMan database in. Alleen mag je dan hopen dat er geen Franse (Duitse) auteurs, titels, of tijdschriften bijzitten,  want dan heb je een  probleem: een auteur als Côté bijv. is niet behoorlijk in te lezen.

Als Scopus nu de mogelijkheid zou bieden om te exporteren in ANSI formaat, of als RefMan bij de RIS importfilter aangeeft dat dat aan te passen is, was het opgelost. Maar dat doen ze niet.

Wat je nu moet doen is het export bestandje opslaan, openen in Notepad, bewaren als ANSI en daarna pas inlezen in RefMan.   Ook voor versie 11, de update die we niet zo lang geleden hebben aangeschaft. Dan gaat het wel goed, maar echt gebruikersvriendelijk is het natuurlijk niet.

EndNote is sinds versie 8 compliant met UFT-8, dus die heeft daar geen probleem mee:  RefMan en Procite wel. Het ziet er naar uit dat de leverancier RefMan aan het afbouwen is: 8 jaar geleden presteerde het beter dan EndNote, nu niet meer: zie bijv   Endnote X2 versus Reference Manager 12.

Wat te doen? Het was al zo moeilijk om onze ICT te overtuigen om RefMan in het netwerk op te nemen, omzetten naar Endnote , ai… En dan is er nog Refworks, maar dat is niet alleen aanzienlijk duurder, het geeft ook firewall problemen in de combinatie met Word. Zotero is ook geen optie, want ze zijn bij ons Windows-hooked, en Zotero is een firefox applicatie.

Nog even en we kunnen het misschien allemaal wel overslaan en naar Mendeley overgaan….

เสาร์ที่ 15 ส.ค. 52

วันอังคารที่จะถึงนี้ ตัวแทนจากบริษัท Elsevier ประจำประเทศสิงคโปร์จะมาขอพบ และสัมภาษณ์เกี่ยวกับการใช้ฐานข้อมูล Scopus กับงานด้านต่างๆ ของมหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล

นึกได้ว่า เมื่อเดือนที่แล้วก็มาคนหนึ่ง … มาสาธิต product ใหม่ของ Elsevier ที่มีชื่อว่า SciVal Spotlight ซึ่งเปิดตัวเมื่อปลายเดือนมิถุนายน 2552 นี้เอง เป็นระบบที่ใช้วัด ตรวจสอบ และติดตาม Research Performance ขององค์กร … โดยอาศัยข้อมูลผลงานวิจัยและการอ้างอิงผลงานวิจัยจากฐานข้อมูล Scopus เป็นพื้นฐาน … เหมาะสำหรับผู้บริหารที่จะใช้ประกอบการตัดสินใจ ให้ทุนสนับสนุน-ส่งเสริมนักวิจัยในสาขาต่างๆ หรือเปรียบเทียบข้อมูลด้านการวิจัยกับองค์กรอื่นๆที่เป็นคู่แข่ง

ดูแล้วน่าตื่นเต้นดี เพราะใช้เทคนิคที่กำลังเป็นที่นิยมในแวดวงวิทยาศาสตร์การแพทย์ สาธารณสุข และประชากรศึกษา นั่นคือ เทคนิค Visualization ซึ่งเป็นการวิเคราะห์ข้อมูลทางสถิติ แล้วแสดงผลออกมาเป็นภาพกราฟิกที่เคลื่อนไหวไปมาตามการเปลี่ยนแปลงของข้อมูล (Motion Chart) แบบ 4 มิติ วิธีนี้เป็นการนำเสนอข้อมูลที่จะทำให้เราสามารถมองเห็นภาพ จินตนาการ หรือนึกตาม และทำความเข้าใจได้ง่ายที่สุด

บรรดาโปรแกรมทำ Visualization ที่ดังมากๆ ตอนนี้ เห็นจะเป็นโปรแกรม Trendanalyzer ของ Gapminder ซึ่งต่อมาเมื่อปี 2007 Google ได้ซื้อ Trendanalyzer (ทั้งโปรแกรม และตัวคนพัฒนาโปรแกรม) ไปทำ Google Visualization API ในรูปแบบ Flash-based Motion Chart และเป็น Gadget สำหรับแจกฟรีค่ะ

เทคนิค Visualization น่าตื่นเต้นอย่างไร ชมการบรรยาย (แบบพากษ์มวย) โดยศาสตราจารย์ Hans Rosling (เจ้าของ Gapminder World) เอาเองก็แล้วกัน

“200 YEARS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD”

I gave up with the idea to mention every search engine which appear each month! But this one is worth investigating.

Queries are searched against 25 sources, 18 scientific society sources and 7 government information sources, including Patents free sources. Some of these sources are not common on usual databases. Of course it is frustrating to get only abstracts, full-text content is mostly reserved to society members.

Anyway, the interface is efficient and intuitive, offering clustering options that everybody now claims (associated topics, top authors, top journals, etc.)

SciTopia can be good to complete traditional sources like PubMed, Scopus and WoS… especialy for technology and engineering topics.

“Real Facts, real numbers, real Knowledge” is the catch phrase that Web Of Science communication people seem to adress to competitors… guess which one?

Among the suggested “Find out”: WoS is “indisputably “the largest (with 45 millions records), the only true cited reference index, is publisher-neutral…

Withour any doubt, a nice offensive from Thomson against Elsevier…

http://isiwebofknowledge.com/realfacts

A través de la lista de distribución BIB-MED, Borja González Pereira del

SRG SCImago Research Group nos hace llegar  la  siguiente información:

“Con un pequeño retraso, el Grupo SCImago ha publicado una nueva actualización de SCImago Journal & Country Rank, la plataforma de evaluación del impacto científico de acceso abierto, para incorporar los datos provenientes de la actualización de Scopus realizado por Elsevier del mes de marzo. Esta actualización conlleva la inclusión de nuevos títulos así como la ampliación de cobertura de revistas ya indizadas.
Los valores de los indicadores mostrados en el portal han sido
recalculados y los embeddings han sido reconstruidos para acomodar los nuevos datos. A continuación describimos los datos más importantes de la actualización.

Cobertura completa de la colección para el año 2007

Con esta actualización se completa el procesamiento de los datos de
publicación y citación de la colección Scopus para el año 2007. Antes de esta actualización, no se cubría el periodo final del año 2007. Como consecuencia, los indicadores de 2007 sufrirán solo pequeñas
variaciones, que en caso de producirse serán debidas a procesos
posteriores de indización retrospectiva.

111 Nuevos Títulos Incluidos

Se han incluido 111 nuevas revistas en la base de datos, sobrepasando
por primera vez las 16.000 revistas indizadas. El portal SJR incluye la
colección completa de Scopus, incluyendo aquellas revistas que presentan bajos niveles de cobertura, de manera que se reduzca los plazos de espera necesarios para mostrar información sobre las revistas.

Los Indicadores han sido recalculados

Los indicadores mostrados en el SJR han sido recalculados, como siempre que se realiza una actualización, para acomodar toda la información bibliométrica suministrada por estos nuevos datos. Los indicadores que hacen referencia a los últimos años sufrirán las mayores variaciones ya que representan el núcleo de la actualización, pero además los valores de años anteriores pueden experimentar algunos cambios que serán más acentuados en unas áreas que en otras en función de hábitos y perfiles de citación.

Inclusión de Datos Retrospectivos

La actualización implica además la inclusión de datos retrospectivos
pertenecientes a revistas que presentan coberturas parciales. También se han realizado pequeños modificaciones debidas a correcciones de datos como resultado del proceso de control de calidad. Sin embargo, todos estos cambios no representan variaciones significativas de los valores de los indicadores”

Borja González Pereira
SRG SCImago Research Group
http://www.scimago.es
http://www.sciamgojr.com
Email: borja.gonzalez at scimago.es

A través de la lista de distribución BIB-MED, especializada en Información y Documentación en Ciencias de la Salud, nos hacen llegar la siguiente información:

Estimados colegas,

Con un pequeño retraso, el Grupo SCImago ha publicado una nueva actualización de SCImago Journal & Country Rank, la plataforma de evaluación del impacto científico de acceso abierto, para incorporar los datos provenientes de la actualización de Scopus realizado por Elsevier del mes de marzo. Esta actualización conlleva la inclusión de nuevos títulos así como la ampliación de cobertura de revistas ya indizadas.

Los valores de los indicadores mostrados en el portal han sido recalculados y los embeddings han sido reconstruidos para acomodar los nuevos datos. A continuación describimos los datos más importantes de la actualización.

Cobertura completa de la colección para el año 2007
Con esta actualización se completa el procesamiento de los datos de publicación y citación de la colección Scopus para el año 2007. Antes de esta actualización, no se cubría el periodo final del año 2007. Como consecuencia, los indicadores de 2007 sufrirán solo pequeñas variaciones, que en caso de producirse serán debidas a procesos posteriores de indización retrospectiva.

111 Nuevos Titulos Incluidos
Se han incluido 111 nuevas revistas en la base de datos, sobrepasando por primera vez las 16.000 revistas indizadas. El portal SJR incluye la colección completa de Scopus, incluyendo aquellas revistas que presentan bajos niveles de cobertura, de manera que se reduzca los plazos de espera necesarios para mostrar información sobre las revistas.

Los Indicadores han sido recalculados
Los indicadores mostrados en el SJR han sido recalculados, como siempre que se realiza una actualización, para acomodar toda la información bibliométrica suministrada por estos nuevos datos. Los indicadores que hacen referencia a los últimos años sufrirán las mayores variaciones ya que representan el núcleo de la actualización, pero además los valores de años anteriores puenden experimentar algunos cambios que serán más acentuados en unas áreas que en otras en función de hábitos y perfiles de citación.

Inclusión de Datos Retrospectivos
La actualización implica además la inclusión de datos retrospectivos pertenecientes a revistas que presentan coberturas parciales. También se han realizado pequeños modificaciones debidas a correcciones de datos como resultado del proceso de control de calidad. Sin embargo,  todos estos cambios no representan variaciones significativas de los valores de los indicadores.

Como siempre, quedamos a su disposición para responder cualquier pregunta.

Borja Gonzalez Pereira

SRG SCImago Research Group

http://www.scimago.es

http://www.sciamgojr.com

Email: borja.gonzalez at scimago.es