Scopus and I:
confessions of a user
Tefko Saracevic, PhD
School of Communication, Information and
Library Studies
Rutgers University
tefko@scils.rutgers.edu
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko
Scopus and I
Full disclosure
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I have no connection with Scopus
– But: I am on Scopus Advisory Board & as such
have a free password
– but I & you have Scopus access through Rutgers Library
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Of two so far, I participated at one Scopus Advisory
Board meeting (Budapest) and evaluated their
product informally over phone conversations
I am not going to the next meeting – Bangkok
I gave an informal talk about using Scopus at 2006
ALA
© Tefko Saracevic
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What you can’t find on Scopus
Named after:
Hamerkop,
Scopus umbretta
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Overview
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Elsevier effort to get into searching
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Massive effort & outlay; big marketing
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global operations:
 Hdq: Amsterdam; marketing: Amsterdam, London, NY;
indexing: Philippines; computers: Dayton, Ohio
Unveiled in 2004
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development investment HUGE & undisclosed
Headed by Eefka Smit & a young Dutch team
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& combining ScienceDirect & Scirus (web searching)
new features unveiled constantly – innovative
 e.g. mid 2005: added RefWorks; end 2005 Citation tracking:
2006 planed Author profiling & further analysis tools
Search engine licensed from Fast
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Coverage
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Science & technology only, no humanities
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Covers some 15,000 journals, 750 proceedings, patents
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includes social sciences (with library & information science), life
sciences
also strong in non-English & developing country sources
incorporates wall to wall Medline, Embase, Compendex, & many
other databases
also web search via Scirus
Time covered: For most is 1996 - ; for others goes back
(e.g. as Medline)
While having gaps coverage seems more
comprehensive than any other single database
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What can you do?
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Subjects search
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Source search – journals, types of sources
Author search with many extensions
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with many capabilities to limit & modify, rank
– 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
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What do you see?
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At first: Lots of features laid out all at once
But, relatively clear interface laying out
capabilities
Geared toward fast, intuitive learning & use
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and indeed it is relatively easy to learn & use
Results displayed in LIFO order, but can be
ranked
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Reviews
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Comparing Scopus and Web of Science
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2005: http://www.charlestonco.com/comp.cfm?id=43
2006: http://www.charlestonco.com/comp.cfm?id=43
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critical of Scopus gaps in coverage, particularly before
1996
but not clear why comparison of these two services
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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
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search options
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search
selections
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But lets get going ….
Live examples from
http://www.scopus.com/
user: tsaracevic
password: I am not telling
or:
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/
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One of my uses of citation
tracking
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Presently, I am writing a comprehensive review
about the notion of relevance in information
science
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for that I searched for some key authors
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including, of course, a vanity search
then I saved each author in a list
then – well lets look
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My four saved lists
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then…
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I selected and viewed the list “Mizzaro citations”
to work on them further
selected them all
clicked on citation tracking
and voila!
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Selected them all
for citation
overview
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Intereste
d in this
one
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Follow-up on
four
Tombros
NEW!
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Following a vanity but
useful trail
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Created a similar list of my own articles
Selected two on relevance
Who cited them?
Who cited them who cited me?
Discovered a number of previously unknown
articles
Here we go:
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This
one
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Relevance subject search
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Selected 50+ articles on relevance
Created a list & saved in My lists
Did citation tracking
Followed up on highly cited articles
Had fun tracking those that cited them that cited
them
Eventually got lost in the tracking
maze – of course!
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Which ones
cited most?
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Tracking a single article
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Barry C.L., Schamber L.
Users' criteria for relevance evaluation: A
cross-situational comparison
1998, Information Processing and Management,
(2-3) 219-236
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Tracked citations in Scopus
And in Web of Science
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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
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and the winner is?
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For Barry & Schamber 1998 article:
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Scopus: 34 citations
Web of Science: 31 citations
Oh well …
Were they the same articles? Degree of overlap?
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Overlap: 27 documents
Scopus had 7 that WoS did not
WoS had 4 that Scopus did not
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Editorial uses
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I use citation tracking as editor of the journal
Information Processing & Management:
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find [good] referees – most important function for
any editor
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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?
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Citation versus subject searching
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Each follows a different path for retrieval
Studies show that each retrieves different
documents
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low overlap between what is retrieved
As a rule, when doing serious searching I do both
Citation searching/tracking also serves different
purposes
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mapping of an area/topic and author
also used fofr assessing impact
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What is not there but I would LOVE it
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Elimination of self-citations
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cannot do it in Web of Science either, but can in Dialog in a
convoluted way
Graphical display of connections
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add visualization, network maps
Longer years back
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Web of Science also has limitation on years depending on
subscription rate
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going back from 1994 costs gazillion dollars – Rutgers does not
have it
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Conclusions
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Actually, I do not have any
But citation tracking beside being
serious business is also fun!
So have fun!
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He was the biggest polymath
ever – maybe he envisioned
Scopus?
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images …
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images …
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and of course…
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