issue 7

Inside Scopus - news for librarians

From the Editor | Cover Story | Who's Who | Did You Know?
As a Matter of Fact | How do I? | It's All About: Content | Confessions of a User | Librarian’s Top Tips | What's new? | Conference Connection

Did You Know?

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Scopus Boosts Researchers’ Productivity Through More Efficient Downloading with Document Download Manager

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Scopus Custom Data Selected by The Times Higher Education Supplement & Quacquarelli Symonds to Enhance Transparency and Clarity of Rankings

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Scopus Affiliation Identifier in Scopus Labs

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Keep Up-to-Date on Scientific Trends with Research Trends

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Scopus Development Partner Program Continues to Expand

Scopus Boosts Researchers’ Productivity Through More Efficient Downloading with Document Download Manager

Scopus is pleased to announce a new service available in February 2008 that enables quick access to retrieve entitled full-text called Document Download Manager. The first service of its kind, end users are now able to easily download and rename multiple PDF’s directly from the Scopus results list, conforming to their daily workflow.

Provided through a partnership between QUOSA, a supplier of full-text article retrieval, organization, and searching solutions and Scopus, the service allows users to organize and easily search all their PDFs, query external databases such as Scopus, conduct automated full-article retrieval on all their hits of interest.

The beauty of this service is users will spend less time gathering information and more time analyzing their research. Typically, users spend a great deal of time following article links to download PDFs and then individually renaming them. With the Scopus Document Download Manager, renaming can be done in a couple of seconds and will enable the user quick access and retrieval of entitled full text.


Scopus Custom Data Selected by The Times Higher Education Supplement & Quacquarelli Symonds to Enhance Transparency and Clarity of Rankings

Scopus Custom Data is being used to help establish the annual Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. Scopus has been chosen to provide the data source for the metric evaluation for the official rankings based on the greater clarity and transparency that can be guaranteed.

The THES, a London-based weekly newspaper that reports specifically on higher education issues, has published its World University Rankings annually since 2004. It works closely with QS, a leading independent network for higher education and related careers that acts as its research and data analysis arm.

“We are extremely proud to be working together with both the THES and QS, as we recognize the importance of these rankings. We are committed to providing the most objective and comprehensive data for the analysis”, explains Jay Katzen, Managing Director Academic & Government Products, Science and Technology Division. “This momentous occasion proves that Scopus has not only won the endorsement of many customers and end-users but is now also clearly supported by the research performance measurement community.”

For the first time, Scopus helped generate this year’s full report of university rankings, publicized on 9th November. Ben Sowter, QS’ Head of Research explains, “As our own methodology develops and improves, we felt we needed a more comprehensive data source. We believe that the strong data found in Scopus, combined with other enhancements we’ve made to our methodology, including the use of z-score aggregation to generate overall scores, will help stabilize rankings, making them more effective for tracking year-on-year performance. They will also result in a more robust and balanced measure of comparative international university quality.”

The decision to move to Scopus was made based on the quality of the data. QS found that Scopus can provide enhanced transparency and clarity for the rankings and have expressed various reasons why Scopus data was preferred.

  • more global, available data, representing a truly global picture for this indicator;
  • greater representation from universities and institutions that have adopted academic systems with different publication patterns;
  • better numbers for institutions with large volumes of high quality research in their own language due to non-English language content incorporated in Scopus;
  • access to greater data details that enhance the quality and transparency of the ranking process.

For further information about the rankings please visit www.thes.co.uk or www.topuniversities.com.


Scopus Affiliation Identifier in Scopus Labs

The first phase of the Scopus Affiliation Identifier will be available in Scopus Labs. You can find Scopus Labs in the top right hand corner on the Scopus home page.

Scopus Labs is available from the Scopus home page to Scopus customers and is a website developed specifically for testing of ideas and tools that could be helpful in scientific research. The tools presented on the page are in an early stage of development and not final.

If you don’t have Scopus Labs and would like to see the Scopus Affiliation Identifier, please contact your local e-helpdesk


Keep Up-to-Date on Scientific Trends with Research Trends

Research Trends is a bi-monthly newsletter providing objective, up-to-the-minute insights into scientific trends based on bibliometric analysis. Research Trends will provide up-to-date insights into the state of science through thought-provoking articles based on bibliometric data, which is analyzed and interpreted by a team of internal and external experts in the field of bibliometrics.

Developed in response to the increasing demand for quality research performance measurement (RPM) and trend-related information by deans, researchers and funding bodies, Research Trends is an essential resource for these target groups.

Each issue will focus on five areas of interest: the value of bibliometric measures, trends in research, country trends, expert opinion and the citation choices of individual authors. The second issue of Research Trends is available online if you wish to learn more.

“Scopus is at the forefront of developing ways for researchers, scientists and funding bodies to measure research output,” said Jay Katzen, Managing Director Academic & Government, Elsevier. “Research Trends is a way to stay connected to the issues; it provides useful, unbiased insights from recognized leaders in the RPM arena to the research community at large.”

To sign up for Research Trends, please visit www.researchtrends.com.


Scopus Development Partner Program Continues to Expand

A fundamental part of Scopus’ success has been its development in close collaboration with an international board of advisors drawn from leading members of the library community known as the Scopus Development Partner Program.

The Development Partners have contributed to Scopus' development through usability and product testing, annual colloquia to share ideas, evaluate Scopus and prioritize future developments, and focus groups to gain in-depth understanding of the daily issues librarians face when providing information services.

Recently in October, the seventh annual colloquium was held in Berlin which brought together 26 development partners and 9 Elsevier staff to discuss ideas for future development of Scopus. Development partners also presented recent projects in their libraries, providing an opportunity to share best practices.

“We’re excited by how much the program is growing, with this year’s colloquium being the largest ever, with influential members from corporate, international and medical communities from all over the world,” said Leontine Treur, Manager Development Partner Program. "The purpose of the colloquium is to bring partners together for frank and open discussions about Scopus and the other library services in general, and to encourage networking and visionary thinking".

All regions of the world are now represented in the Development Partner Program, with new development partners such as Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (USA); Pioneer, a DuPont Company (USA); the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) which is part of the Brazilian CAPES consortium; the Kyushu University and Chiba University (Japan); Hong Kong University; Mahidol University (Thailand); and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology.

Go to the Development Partner Program to learn more about the program.