28 maart 2007
ISI Web of Knowledge consortium day in the Netherlands
Thomson Scientific paid a long overdue to visit to their Dutch library customers today. In quite a posh hotel in Utrecht they had organized a whole day meeting in cooperation with the consortium of Dutch University Libraries (UKB). A whole day! Was that really needed? Well for somebody who uses WoS on a nearly daily basis, it was a little bit over the top. However for some attendees from some colleges of higher education it was quite a good grounder in to the basics of WoS.
Along the way we picked up some interesting bits and pieces as well. Such as the fact that the coverage of journals by all three ISI databases has increased from 8700 scholarly journals to 9200 journals. Despite the extensive explanation of journal selection by editorial committees it was admitted that the number of French and Spanish language journals increased under pressure from library consortia in those geographical areas. Let's assume that they included only the top journals in those languages.
The unique author identification aids which have been available since the end of last year has now finally moved beyond the authors listed in ISIhighlycited only. Apparently this is now available for some 180,000 unique authors that have collected at least more than 1000 citations each. For the science commons we have to wait a little longer.
We also heard that the term "correcting for self citations" in the fairly recent (and impressive) citation reports is in fact a little misleading. Since it only corrects for the citations from the journals in the original search results. Should have worked that out for myself before, but it reminds me of the discussions we had with Elsevier on Scopus in Utrecht last year.
It was a pity that the basic grounder on general searches took so long, that we hardly covered cited references searches. It passed the screen a few times though. Interesting to not that the marketers from ISI still talked about the citation look up results, and then always wanted to loop up the full search of citing references. I mentioned to them that many researchers are actually only interested in the citation lookup results and want to have a simple and direct export function from those results into, for instance Excel. I was under the impression that my arguments didn't make a big impression really. So we will continue for some time with our users complaining about the difficulty of downloading the cited reference search look-up results in to some other software (excel preferably).
Another nice one, well hidden in the depths of WoS, is the possibility of RSS feeds in addition to the e-mail alerts. With the latter I was familiar with. But at a certain point my vanity searches expired and I didn’t bother to extend anymore. The nice thing about the RSS alerts is that they don't expire. You need to register with ISI though, I really wonder how many users have profiles on ISI. ISI couldn't tell. I wonder if that is included in the usage reports. Something to check at a later date.
In the afternoon there was some more attention for EndNoteWeb. What really amazed me is that there was no EndNoteX account required. Which somehow was the impression that I had from all their advertisements. My neighbour was under that impression as well, so I wasn't the only one. But apparently we can make an EndNote Web account because the university has an WoS license. Interesting to hear from the audience all kind of little problems that I experienced myself as well. Toolbar configuration problems, login in to some external databases (which was later confirmed as an existing bug). Well, personally I can't get really serious about EndNote Web, but perhaps useful for beginning users. I will grill it more thoroughly in the future though.
The best was saved for the end. We got a look at some mock-ups for the major overhaul of Web of Knowledge that is planned for July this year. The colours are army green and soft yellow. The main pages focus on cross-search, and simplified boxes on the first screens. The refine search options will move from the top to the left, and some refine options are shown more clearly (more like Scopus?) but still offer more options to refine than Scopus does at this moment. The busy menu that appears on the right hand side of the screen is either much quieter or disappears. Can't remember exactly anymore. Cited reference searches are still similar to what they are at the moment. They are not going to improve their indexing, they are not going to correct citations when the mistakes are obvious. In a few years time you have to remember that author names were once only 15 characters long, then 18, than included diacriticals and spaces, and at some point in the future will include first names on some occasions as well. I really wonder if you change indexing policies, you shouldn’t try to correct as much as possible the repercussions of this change for your historical data as well.
And in the end they will still carry the brand ISI, and the databases SCI, SSCI and A&H but that is for historical reasons only.
Update Ecobibl was er ook en heeft een verslag geplaatst.
Along the way we picked up some interesting bits and pieces as well. Such as the fact that the coverage of journals by all three ISI databases has increased from 8700 scholarly journals to 9200 journals. Despite the extensive explanation of journal selection by editorial committees it was admitted that the number of French and Spanish language journals increased under pressure from library consortia in those geographical areas. Let's assume that they included only the top journals in those languages.
The unique author identification aids which have been available since the end of last year has now finally moved beyond the authors listed in ISIhighlycited only. Apparently this is now available for some 180,000 unique authors that have collected at least more than 1000 citations each. For the science commons we have to wait a little longer.
We also heard that the term "correcting for self citations" in the fairly recent (and impressive) citation reports is in fact a little misleading. Since it only corrects for the citations from the journals in the original search results. Should have worked that out for myself before, but it reminds me of the discussions we had with Elsevier on Scopus in Utrecht last year.
It was a pity that the basic grounder on general searches took so long, that we hardly covered cited references searches. It passed the screen a few times though. Interesting to not that the marketers from ISI still talked about the citation look up results, and then always wanted to loop up the full search of citing references. I mentioned to them that many researchers are actually only interested in the citation lookup results and want to have a simple and direct export function from those results into, for instance Excel. I was under the impression that my arguments didn't make a big impression really. So we will continue for some time with our users complaining about the difficulty of downloading the cited reference search look-up results in to some other software (excel preferably).
Another nice one, well hidden in the depths of WoS, is the possibility of RSS feeds in addition to the e-mail alerts. With the latter I was familiar with. But at a certain point my vanity searches expired and I didn’t bother to extend anymore. The nice thing about the RSS alerts is that they don't expire. You need to register with ISI though, I really wonder how many users have profiles on ISI. ISI couldn't tell. I wonder if that is included in the usage reports. Something to check at a later date.
In the afternoon there was some more attention for EndNoteWeb. What really amazed me is that there was no EndNoteX account required. Which somehow was the impression that I had from all their advertisements. My neighbour was under that impression as well, so I wasn't the only one. But apparently we can make an EndNote Web account because the university has an WoS license. Interesting to hear from the audience all kind of little problems that I experienced myself as well. Toolbar configuration problems, login in to some external databases (which was later confirmed as an existing bug). Well, personally I can't get really serious about EndNote Web, but perhaps useful for beginning users. I will grill it more thoroughly in the future though.
The best was saved for the end. We got a look at some mock-ups for the major overhaul of Web of Knowledge that is planned for July this year. The colours are army green and soft yellow. The main pages focus on cross-search, and simplified boxes on the first screens. The refine search options will move from the top to the left, and some refine options are shown more clearly (more like Scopus?) but still offer more options to refine than Scopus does at this moment. The busy menu that appears on the right hand side of the screen is either much quieter or disappears. Can't remember exactly anymore. Cited reference searches are still similar to what they are at the moment. They are not going to improve their indexing, they are not going to correct citations when the mistakes are obvious. In a few years time you have to remember that author names were once only 15 characters long, then 18, than included diacriticals and spaces, and at some point in the future will include first names on some occasions as well. I really wonder if you change indexing policies, you shouldn’t try to correct as much as possible the repercussions of this change for your historical data as well.
And in the end they will still carry the brand ISI, and the databases SCI, SSCI and A&H but that is for historical reasons only.
Update Ecobibl was er ook en heeft een verslag geplaatst.
Labels: EndNote, English, ISI, Web of Science, WoS
24 februari 2007
Sometimes lists can drive you crazy
Currently I am working on a citation analysis job. Reviewing quite a number of researchers and an even larger list of publications. Our trick is that we make a comparison of the citation data extracted from Web of Science with the Baselines found in the Essential Indicators (ESI). Both are databases from Thomson Scientific. Not too much work you might think. Two databases, one is derived from the other, made by the same company.
Well, in theory no sweat.
When you try to work out one or two articles you can run already into some little annoyances, when you one to look-up thousands of journals ISI can drive you mad.
Once you have established that researcher x has published an article in the American Heart Journal and found y citations. The next step is that you look up this journal in ESI. You have to establish in which field the journal is categorized according to ESI. In ESI you have to look this up using the journal abbreviations, quite simple the abbreviation of this journal is AMER Heart J. Slightly odd since this journal is abbreviated in the Journal Citation Report as the AM Heart J. But a another article in the American Journal of Critical Care should be abbreviated as AMER j crit care in ESI. Similar happens with Advances in Advances in Atmospheric Science and Advances in Ecological research. In the first instance you should abbreviate Advances as Adv and in the second instance as Advan. These are mere two examples, doing this manually you run in hundreds of examples.
Ok, be smart don't do it manually. Let's automate. At In-Cites there is a list with all journal categories available. Really nice of Thomson to list a really handy help tool outside the product itself (Yes there is a help file with journal abbreviations available in ESI, but you can't search that list directly, you have to browse, and heck they miss the journal categories in that help file altogether)
Working with the list at In-Cites isn’t a real joy either. Have for instance a look at Abacus, that journal is listed twice at the In-Cites list. Not too much of a problem you might think. But when you want to use a database to make lookups of journal categories and baseline data a bit less labour intensive the best way is to use ISSN to couple the various tables.
Sounds simple. Use the table with all journal categories from In-Cites and match that on the full title against the Journal Masterlist of ISI where they have the ISSN listed as well. Soon you find out that the AUTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from In cites doesn't match with the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from the Masterlist because a stupid spelling error. Or the A N Z JOURNAL OF SURGERY doesn't match with the ANZ JOURNAL OF SURGERY. From the 12485 journals listed at In-cites I was only able to match 8346 journals on journal name. That leaves me some 4000 to match manually, or find out what went wrong.
What I really wonder is, how is it possible that all these little name variations, journal abbreviations differences and other mismatches are possible for a suit of products from a company that breathes databases. A company that has only data in its veins, that sweats information. A company that claims knowledge.
We all rely heavily on their products.
Well, in theory no sweat.
When you try to work out one or two articles you can run already into some little annoyances, when you one to look-up thousands of journals ISI can drive you mad.
Once you have established that researcher x has published an article in the American Heart Journal and found y citations. The next step is that you look up this journal in ESI. You have to establish in which field the journal is categorized according to ESI. In ESI you have to look this up using the journal abbreviations, quite simple the abbreviation of this journal is AMER Heart J. Slightly odd since this journal is abbreviated in the Journal Citation Report as the AM Heart J. But a another article in the American Journal of Critical Care should be abbreviated as AMER j crit care in ESI. Similar happens with Advances in Advances in Atmospheric Science and Advances in Ecological research. In the first instance you should abbreviate Advances as Adv and in the second instance as Advan. These are mere two examples, doing this manually you run in hundreds of examples.
Ok, be smart don't do it manually. Let's automate. At In-Cites there is a list with all journal categories available. Really nice of Thomson to list a really handy help tool outside the product itself (Yes there is a help file with journal abbreviations available in ESI, but you can't search that list directly, you have to browse, and heck they miss the journal categories in that help file altogether)
Working with the list at In-Cites isn’t a real joy either. Have for instance a look at Abacus, that journal is listed twice at the In-Cites list. Not too much of a problem you might think. But when you want to use a database to make lookups of journal categories and baseline data a bit less labour intensive the best way is to use ISSN to couple the various tables.
Sounds simple. Use the table with all journal categories from In-Cites and match that on the full title against the Journal Masterlist of ISI where they have the ISSN listed as well. Soon you find out that the AUTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from In cites doesn't match with the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from the Masterlist because a stupid spelling error. Or the A N Z JOURNAL OF SURGERY doesn't match with the ANZ JOURNAL OF SURGERY. From the 12485 journals listed at In-cites I was only able to match 8346 journals on journal name. That leaves me some 4000 to match manually, or find out what went wrong.
What I really wonder is, how is it possible that all these little name variations, journal abbreviations differences and other mismatches are possible for a suit of products from a company that breathes databases. A company that has only data in its veins, that sweats information. A company that claims knowledge.
We all rely heavily on their products.
Labels: English, ESI, Essential Science Indicators, In-Cites, ISI, Thomson Scientific, Web of Science, WoS
14 januari 2007
Highly cited scientists in the Netherlands and their Alma Mater
ISIhighlyCited.com is a free database from ISI in which they list all of the 250 most cited scientists, over the last 10 years, in the world for each of the 22 major subfields of science. These fields range from Agriculture to Social sciences and everything in between.
Once a scientist is selected for this database they are notified by ISI (Thomson Scientific) and are kindly requested to complete their scientific CV which is listed in the database. So the researchers themselves are in charge in the way they are presented in this database. For instance when Martijn Katan moved from Wageningen University to the VU in Amsrerdam he changed his address in that database.
Once a scientist is selected for this database they are notified by ISI (Thomson Scientific) and are kindly requested to complete their scientific CV which is listed in the database. So the researchers themselves are in charge in the way they are presented in this database. For instance when Martijn Katan moved from Wageningen University to the VU in Amsrerdam he changed his address in that database.
One little thing that still puzzles me, is that ISI lists 91 highly cited researchers, but that includes one scientist from Belgium, and another one probably from Spain (I did not bother to sort that out any further) but it is striking for the impression that it leaves for the quality of ISI databases in general. So I consider that the Netherlands has only 89 highly cited scientists.
What does it further matter you might wonder. The ISIhighlyCited is being used for the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings. The number of highly cited scientist accounts for 20% of the score. Okay, so what for these rankings? Only that these ranking are regularly quoted in the Economist, which is read by potential students, or by people in charge of allocation of research funds. But there is more. The (yearly?) ranking of Newsweek is for 1/6 determined by this same data as well. Which is read by potential students or people in charge of...... You get the gest. It all has to do with branding, with name building, with reputation. In the scientific world that is dependent to a large extend on the affiliations mentioned in the scholarly papers published in peer reviewed journals, and subsequently abstracted in bibliographies and other databases such as ISIhighlycited.com.
Researcher connected to our university who has decided to list himself under the affiliation of his sub-institute. I really wonder if the It is therefore very interesting to see under which affiliations these top researchers list themselves. In Wageningen the naming of the university appears to be very difficult. 13 research use 4 different names. We see Wageningen Agricultural University (4x), WageningenUniversiteit (5x), Wagenignen University (3x) and Wageningen University and Research Centre (1x). Slightly odd to see the Dutch name of the Univerity listed in an international database. But perhaps the people from Shanghai are smart enough to count all of these variations as one. However there is a 14th highly cited researcher from Wageningen. I do really wonder if the people from Shanghai recognize whether RIKILT - Institute of Food Safety is also part of Wageningen University?
So we score in Wageningen 14 of the 89 highly cited researchers in the Netherlands. Not too bad. Not too bad at all. Looking at the other Universities, Leiden has 15 highly cited researchers, who produced 6 different affiliations. Utrecht ends ex aequo with Wageningen on a shared 2-3 place behind Leiden. In Utrecht I count 6 different names for the university. 4th is the VU with 10 highly cited researcher (including Katan) they came up with only 4 different variations of their university's name and the UvA is only 5th with 8 highly cited researchers.
Not bad for Wageningen University anyway. Only next time should these highly esteemed professors spell the name of their Alma Mater correctly. Then we will really celebrate.
Not bad for Wageningen University anyway. Only next time should these highly esteemed professors spell the name of their Alma Mater correctly. Then we will really celebrate.
Labels: Affiliations, English, ISI, isihighlycited.com, University rankings
