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