National and International Scientific Publications

Background Quantifying scientific output is a phenomenon without which science policy and science strategy can no longer be managed. Despite occasional criticism of bibliometric analyses, this tool – when correctly and transparently applied – provides a helpful parameter for science decisions, whereby the publication rate (quantity of publications) and the citation rate (perception of publications) in particular are explored and presented in different contexts. For a long time, the Science Citation Index (SCI) was the only multidisciplinary database that could be used to quantitatively determine the response to scientific publications. This era came to a close in 2005. The large scientific concern "Reed Elsevier" placed a second multidisciplinary database (SCOPUS) on the market. On the one hand, this product was to serve as a database of research literature for scientists, and therefore corresponds to a "normal" bibliographic database like those provided by libraries in every possible discipline. On the other hand, the fact that it records the citations of scientific articles put it in direct competition with Thomson Scientific's existing Science Citation Index. The poster deals with a comparison of both databases and focuses the aspect of the language, a paper is written in. Using examples from Croatia, Germany and the US science community, this analysis will investigate the coverage of national languages in the citation databases “Web of Science” (Thomson Scientific) and “Scopus” (Elsevier).

Methods The paper is primarily concerned with the question, if a higher number of journals (journal volume) and articles in SCOPUS is accompanied by a better coverage of national languages. The paper should answer this question with the aid of selected analyses for Croatian, German and English speaking journals and scientific articles, represented in both databases. The following investigations will be carried out simultaneously in SCI and SCOPUS:

1. Coverage of the various national journals in the SCI database
2. Proportion of the various nations at the overall number of publications in both databases
3. Proportion of croatian language articles of croatian papers in both databases
4. Proportion of english language articles of croatian papers in both databases

Purpose The purpose is, to give a short overview of bibliometrics, to demonstrate the use of these evaluation methods, as well as to compare the journal coverage of the two mentioned databases, focusing the aspect of national languages in scientific communication

Literature Ball, R. & Tunger, D.: Science Indicators Revisited. in: Book of Abstracts – 9th International Conference on Science & Technology Indicators. 07-09 September 2006, Leuven, Belgium, pp. 177 – 178; this study was also presented as a poster on the conferences

Ball, R.; Tunger, D.: Science indicators revisited - Science Citation Index versus SCOPUS: A bibliometric comparison of both citation databases in: Information Services and Use, 26, 2006, pp. 293 - 301

Bordons, M., Fernandez, M. T., & Gomez, I.: Advantages and limitations in the use of impact factor measures for the assessment of research performance. Scientometrics, 53(2), 2002, pp. 195-206.

Garfield, E.: Science Citation Index – A New Dimension in Indexing in: Essays of an Information Scientist, Vol.7, pp. 525 – 535, 1984; Reprinted from: Science, 08.05.1964, Vol.144, No. 3619, pp. 649 – 654

Research Centre Jülich – Central Library: Bibliometric Analysis in Science and Research - Applications, Benefits and Limitations. Juelich, 2003; http://www.fz-juelich.de/zb/Bibliometrics

van Raan, A.: Measuring Science in: Moed, H.F., Glänzel, W. & Schmoch, U.: Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research. Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004, pp. 19-50.