Producing data on Social Sciences and Humanities:
Opportunities at Elsevier
Henk F. MoedElsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands
ESF Workshop “Addressing the shortage of data on SSH”, Strasbourg, 13-14 September 2010
Dato on how SSH work (a “science”of SSH)
Levels of Aggregation
Aggregation Level Examples
Macro Country; economic sector; main discipline
Meso Research field; institution (e.g. university); big journal
Micro Department, Research group, specialty, individual researcher
Research Field Delimitation
Method Examples
journal based, pre-defined
Web of Science or Scopus journal subject classification
Keyword based Emerging topics;
Hybrids Specialist journals + ‘ splitted’ general journals
EC projects
• EUMIDA Project (Pilot): Census of European Higher Education Institutions.
• U-Rank (Pilot): classification and performance indicators for European HEI
Input measures based on publication data
• Number of ‘research active ’(=publishing) authors by field, country; institution
(SSH) outputs and impactsImpacts Publication/text Non-publication
Scientific-scholarly
Journal paper; book chapter; monograph
Research data file; video of experiment
Educational Teaching course book; syllabus
Skilled researchers
Economic Patent Product; process; device; design; image
Cultural Newspaper article; Interviews; events; Performances; exhibits
More research needed on publication and citation practices in SSH
• Citation context and content
• Publication language
• Author nationality
• Paradigmatic background, school formation
• Type of source (journal vs. book)
• Scientific-scholarly collaboration
• Information circulation speed
Option Example/Case
1 Combine existing SSH bibliographies CSA-Illumina
2 Create new SSH databases Iberian Citation Index
3 Expand existing citation indexes WoS, Scopus
4 Explore Google Scholar; Book Search
5 Output registration systems METIS (NL)
6 Book citation index from repositories Harnad’s project
7 Electronic Library Catalogues WorldCat
8 Digitally preserved national collections National Libraries
Elsevier?
SCOPUS
Elsevier involvement
Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities
in Scopus
Expansion of A&H in Scopus - facts
• In June 2009 Scopus doubled its Arts & Humanities (A&H) titles (incl. all ERIH-A)
• More than 1,400 A&H titles were added to Scopus
• Scopus users have access to nearly 3,500 A&H journals from around the world at no additional cost
• Added titles include high-quality titles in core A&H subject areas
Scopus coverage across subject areas:Over 6,200 titles in SSH
Social Soc + HumSocial Soc + Hum6,2506,250
Health SciencesHealth Sciences5,9505,950
Physical SciencesPhysical Sciences5,3005,300
Life SciencesLife Sciences3,7003,700
More than 18,000 titles in Scopus, titles can be in more than one subject area
Number of A&H titles per subject area:Ranges from 24 in musicology to 692 in education
Social Science and A&H titles per region:Europe is well represented
Language Titles
English 3,122 French 305 German 265 Italian 129 Spanish 119 Portuguese 34 Dutch 24 Czech 9 Croatian 5 Greek 4 Other 20
Top 10 A&H languages in Scopus:23 % is non-English
Top 10 A&H publishers in Scopus account for 36 % of titles
Publisher Titles
Taylor & Francis* 284SAGE 194Wiley Blackwell 179Springer 144Elsevier** 144Cambridge UP 77Oxford UP 77Brill 59Johns Hopkins UP 40De Gruyter 40
Other 2,219
*incl. Routledge, Haworth Press**incl. Pergamon, Academic Press, Masson
Scopus: Future plans
• Improve quality and completeness of Social Sciences and A&H collection
• Add other content types such as conference proceedings and books
• Improve coverage by adding more titles across region, language and subject area
• Collaborate with other initiatives
Combine existing SSH databases
1. Make inventory of databases 2. Define selection criteria (e.g., digital; user stats)3. Specify database characteristics and structure4. Load content into a standardised data format5. Standardise content (e.g., cross-linking)
What data fields? (Cited references? Affiliations?)Degree of standardisation/cross linking? Funding? Business model?
Book Citation Index Project: Objectives(prof Stevan Harnad and collaborators)
• Hone the tolls for harvesting and extracting metadata and references from books (and dissertations)
• Create a prototype demo of a reference-linked book-citation index
• Examine in 2-3 SSH sub-disciplines the correlation for book authors between journal and book citations.
Thank You
Option Example/Case
1 Combine existing SSH bibliographies CSA-Illumina
2 Create new SSH databases Iberian Citation Index
3 Expand existing citation indexes WoS, Scopus
4 Explore Google Scholar; Book Search
5 Output registration systems METIS (NL)
6 Citation index from repositories Harnad’s project
7 Electronic Library Catalogues WorldCat
8 Digitally preserved national collections National Libraries
Elsevier
Books in SCOPUS?
SHOWCASE?
SciVal involvement
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