| Summary of Latest Enhancements in Scopus | |
On Saturday, June 2, 2007, the following enhancements have been made to Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research.
1. Cross-searching Scopus & ProQuest CSA Illumina
Scopus offers a unique cross-searching integration with ProQuest CSA Illumina, substantially increasing high-quality content in the areas of Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences, by making this content searchable on Scopus and, also, by making selected Scopus content searchable on ProQuest CSA Illumina.
To see an instructional movie on how ProQuest CSA Illumina works in Scopus click here.
2. h-index incorporated in Scopus
Scopus incorporates the h-index as a means to evaluate research performance, including unique graphs that enable users to interpret the value of the h-index by displaying publication and citation trends over time.
To see an instructional movie on how h-index works in Scopus click here.
1. Cross-searching Scopus & ProQuest CSA Illumina
What is it?
Scopus and ProQuest CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) have established a unique reciprocal searching and linking partnership, making content in important areas searchable on both products.
Scopus users will find de-duplicated search results from ProQuest CSA’s leading databases in the area of Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences such as Sociological Abstracts (dating back to 1952) integrated into their Scopus search results. These search results directly link to the original record on ProQuest CSA Illumina.
As a result, an additional 4,500 titles in Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences are now searchable on Scopus, offering users the unique possibility to search highly relevant content from two well-established products from one single interface.
In addition, 4,500 Scopus titles in Natural Sciences and Business & Economics will become searchable on ProQuest CSA Illumina, giving their users de-duplicated results which link back to Scopus. As a result, Scopus content will become more and even easier accessible to researchers at relevant points in the literature research process.
This integration is offered to institutions with access to both products at no extra costs, offering an additional return on investment.
What does it look like?
1. Incorporated results when searching in Scopus
Results from ProQuest CSA’s databases that a user’s institution subscribes to are immediately and fully integrated in the search results. These results contain bibliographic information, such as title, source title, volume/issue information and author name.
Users can search through all bibliographic information including the abstract, keywords and references but for viewing, the abstract users will be referred to ProQuest CSA Illumina.
The citation count indicates how often this ProQuest CSA record is cited by Scopus records. As a result, it is possible to include these results in the Citation Tracker, giving a visual, at-a-glance overview of citation behavior across results from Scopus and ProQuest CSA databases offering a uniquely comprehensive citation overview.
In addition to the direct link to ProQuest CSA Illumina, the View at Publisher link and other linking options for any result from ProQuest CSA’s databases can be activated and customized: users can link directly to the full-text article and/or other library services from within Scopus as specified per institution.
2. Seamless links to the abstract
When clicking on the ‘Abstract on CSA’ button, the user will be guided directly to the abstract page on ProQuest CSA Illumina.
3. Incorporated results when searching in ProQuest CSA Illumina
When searching in ProQuest CSA Illumina, the Scopus results are also integrated in the results page.
4. Seamless links to the abstract
The Scopus link indicates that the abstract is available on Scopus.
What are users’ benefits?
This integration offers uniquely comprehensive and superior coverage of the most extensive resources in both Science, Technical and Medical (STM) and Art and Humanities (A&H) – all seamlessly integrated into one single user-friendly interface:
2. h-index incorporated in Scopus
What is the h-index?
The h-index was developed in 2005 by Jorge Hirsch, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of California in San Diego. Hirsch’s aim was to qualify the impact and quantity of individual scientist’s research output.
The measure he devised is simple: a scientist with an h-index of, say, 5 has published 5 articles that have each attracted at least 5 citations. This means that the rest of the author’s papers have less than 5 citations. Hirsch’s original paper appears at: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508025.
Scopus now offers the automatic calculation of the h-index as a means to evaluate research performance.
How does it work?
The automatic calculation of the h-index can be used to evaluate:
1. Evaluating an author
The h-index is available for all authors in Scopus. Users can view an author’s h-index either by clicking on the Scopus Citation Tracker on the author search results page or by viewing the author details page.
Scopus does not just offer automatic calculation of the h-index, but gives it a meaning by providing a series of unique visualizations. Users can click on the h-graph button to view three separate tabs: h-Graph, Articles Published and Citations.
In the first of these, the h-graph, the curve represents the number of citations received for each article produced by the author. The straight x=y line represents the h-line where the number of citations equals the number of articles. The h-index appears at the incision point of the two lines.
Graph 1
The graph above illustrates the h-index value, but in such a way that users can easily see it in the context of the authors list of publications for the period. In this case users can see the h-index = 5, but also that there is quite a large number of papers that have fewer citations.
In the remaining two graphs Scopus offers an overview of the author’s publication history and level of citation activity through time. These graphs both offer further insight into the author’s publications and citation patterns showing any potential highs and lows that are useful in research performance evaluation. In order to perform effective evaluations users should have access to all the information available for authors. Indicators used in research performance evaluation should never be used in isolation, but as one key piece in a larger puzzle. These visualizations empower users to see more of the puzzle.
Articles Published graph showing articles published by the author over time:
Citations graph showing citations over time:
These graphs provide users with invaluable transparency, enabling them to view citation and publication patterns over time.
Scopus by default calculates the h-index based on an author’s papers from 1996 to the present. This publication window can be adjusted from the standard ≥1996 to a date range of choice. This option is a good means of overcoming the tendency of the h-index to work in favour of long-established authors (with a large number of articles to their credit) over relative newcomers.
Authors can use details of their own h-index – readily exported via Scopus - in grant and funding applications, while administrators and heads of faculty will find the functionality useful as a means of evaluating individuals for tenure and promotions.
2. Evaluating a collection of selected articles
The h-index can also be used to evaluate any set of chosen articles via the Scopus Citation Tracker, for instance all articles published in a journal, by a research project and/or a group of researchers. The h-index will be generated for the article(s) included in the Citation Tracker and the user can view its corresponding graph.
This will enable grant and funding bodies to run simultaneous comparisons of research groups, while journal editors can track the impact of their journals’ output with unrivalled convenience and accuracy. Similarly, heads of departments will find Scopus an even greater asset in monitoring the output of their respective teams.
This automatic calculation of the h-index differs from the first one. Whereas the h-index for an author includes only articles published after 1995 and its citations to ensure consistency across authors, for a collection of selected articles it does include papers published before 1996: users have full flexibility to choose which articles to include and which ones not. It is important to note that while articles published before 1996 will have an h-index, their citation counts will come from articles published in 1996 and onwards.
Note: WebCites and PatentCites are not included in the evaluations; only citations originating from peer reviewed sources in Scopus are included.
Questions?
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