Who's Who

Yukun Harsono, Vice President of Product Marketing, Academic and Government Products, Science and Technology Division

Inside Scopus recently caught up with Yukun Harsono, Vice President of Product Marketing, Academic and Government Products, Science and Technology Division to learn more about his vision for Scopus and to talk about Scopus Journal Analyzer, an exciting new enhancement that will save researchers and librarians significant time in getting a transparent overview of the journal landscape.

Yukun joined Elsevier two years ago developing marketing strategy for various regional markets, and as a result, he has constantly moved across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe. Now based in Amsterdam, Yukun oversees Scopus’ product marketing strategy and is actively taking a user-centric design approach to better meet research workflow needs.

Yukun got his start in publishing in 1999 working at Random House in New York, where he worked as a project manager focused on developing corporate strategies for imprints that published titles such as the Da Vinci Code, My Life by Bill Clinton and Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas. This experience led Yukun to Tokyo, where he learned Japanese while working as Associate Director of International Projects at Random House Kodansha, a joint venture between the American and Japanese publishing houses.

With the jump to academic publishing at Elsevier and Scopus, Yukun is excited about the opportunity to be engaged in a socially meaningful enterprise that is focused on helping the scientific community make important research breakthroughs.

Yukun’s vision for Scopus is to provide a platform that improves research outcomes by enhancing the researcher’s workflow but gets the balance right between a sophisticated platform and a simple user interface.

“I see Scopus as a powerful, living architecture that influences and is influenced by our users.” He continues, “We are developing Scopus to be a versatile platform with different functionalities that benefit researchers, librarians, editors, deans and administrators. Our goal is to serve the broad scope of the research community but not forget the focused needs of these specific user groups. Scope + Focus = Scopus.”

It’s exactly this versatility and commitment to information discovery that makes Scopus unique. Launched in May 2008, an exciting new enhancement, the Scopus Journal Analyzer will help researchers, journal editors and librarians to analyze the performance of journals and assist them in optimising resources and maximising their return on research investment.

In today’s crowded research landscape, performing good research in itself does not promptly translate to widespread awareness for the research. Being published in the right journals that are widely read – and in turn, cited – by the right peers is what gets researchers the recognition and prestige they deserve. Yet, as more new journal titles appear and research in new inter-disciplinary areas begin to conform less to traditional subject categories, researchers may find it tough to identify where they should publish to ensure maximum reach and coverage for their work.

Using Scopus’ extensive database of citations from over 15,000 peer-reviewed journals, the Scopus Journal Analyzer enables users to compare up to 10 journals simultaneously, back to 1996. The graphical overview delivers fast, field-specific, transparent and objective results that are updated every two months. Users will be able to perform clear, up-to-date comparisons, which in turn will help them make more informed decisions.

“The Scopus Journal Analyzer saves researchers valuable time in assessing which journals to target – particularly journals specializing in niche subject areas. Once you have scoped the relative influence of different journals for a specific discipline, you can drill down to the article abstracts within Scopus and see the exact types of research that are published in these journals. Then you can determine the best journal for bringing your research to the wider scientific community.”

Yukun further explains how librarians benefit. “As librarians are one step away from the research field and may not have the benefit of knowing the key journals in every subject, the Scopus Journal Analyzer can help them assess journal performance and recommend a portfolio that falls under a particular academic discipline. With a few clicks, you can see whose works are published in these journals and whether they adequately include those from your institution. If not, you can decide to add those journals which your researchers publish in, helping them and ultimately your institution increase the reach of their research output.” check

Yukun grew up in Singapore and USA, graduating from Harvard University with a B.A. in Sociology and an MBA. Fluent in Malay, Indonesian Mandarin and now trying hard to brush up on his Dutch, Yukun enjoys running, reading, art and travel.

User feedback is essential to the continued success of the Scopus Journal Analyzer – feel free to contact Yukun with your feedback.