Science/NSF report

[Vladimir Pislyakov]

Dear Loet,

I used to think that NSF (or rather ipIQ Inc.) works with SCI, not SCIE and 
that explains the difference in the number of journals. They always call 
the database SCI and it is available on disk as far as I know. The final 
~500 journals are excluded as they formed "professional fields" column in 
SEI-2006 which is omitted in 2008 version, as is expressly stated on p. 5-
37 of the Vol. 1.

These are just versions, certainly it would be interesting to have an 
explanation from the SEI creators.

Kind regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir Pislyakov 

Assistant Director for Electronic Resources Management 
Higher School of Economics Library

Senior Research Fellow
Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge

Higher School of Economics

20 Myasnitskaya street 
Moscow, 101000 
Russia 
Tel.: +7 (495) 6213785
Fax: +7 (495) 6287931
E-mail: pislyakov at hse.ru 
URL: http://library.hse.ru; http://issek.hse.ru/index.html 



On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:51:35 +0100, Loet Leydesdorff <loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET> 
wrote:

>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
>Dear colleagues,
>
>I followed up on the discussion about the selection of a sample of journals
>which was used for the NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2008. I
>distribute this email because of the public relevance of these indicators,
>but anonymized the heading:
>
>I studied the files of journals included in the analysis which you so 
kindly
>sent me. The Science and Egineering Indicators 2008 mention on p. 5-37 
(Vol.
>1) that 4906 journals were included in the analysis in 2005 and you 
indicate
>that the file with the filename JNL_FILE_Y2005_v3.XLS provided the base for
>this statistics.
>
>This file contains 10,216 journal names in total; 5394 of these journals
>contained publications in 2005 and 5393 match with the ISI database for 
this
>same year using the ISSN. The ISI database (SCI + SSCI) contains 2132 other
>journal names which were not included. The descriptive statistics are as
>follows (in percentages):
>
>
>
>SCI+SSCI	 NSF2005	 % included
>journals	 7525	 5393	 71.67
>publications	 898892	 705971	 78.54
>citations	 23322568	 21631020	 92.75
>
>An analysis of variance between the group of journals covered by the NSF
>(5393 journals) against the journals not-covered (2132) teaches that the
>covered group has significantly different means on all relevant parameters:
>
>
>Thus, the smaller group scores higher on all these parameters. However, the
>impact factor was not the criterion for the selection given that the
>included group also contains journals with low impact:
>
>
>
>Statistics
>
>impact factor
>
>
>
>N
>
>Valid
>
>5372
>
>
>Missing
>
>21
>
>
>Mean
>
>1.84146
>
>
>Median
>
>1.13900
>
>
>Mode
>
>.500
>
>
>Std. Deviation
>
>2.752701
>
>
>Range
>
>49.794
>
>
>Minimum
>
>.000
>
>
>Maximum
>
>49.794
>
>
>
>
>
>The question thus becomes urgent what the selection criteria are for these
>5393 journals, and what justifies the further reduction to 4906 journals as
>a basis for the NSF Indicators 2008. As we know, the various indicators are
>sensitive to the choices of selection criteria.
>
>
>
>For example, part of the problem with "the decline of UK science" in the
>1980s was that UK scientists tended to publish above average in journals
>which were not included in the CHI journal set (for analytic reasons)
>because these journals were relatively new journals.
>
>
>
>Given the weight of the NSF report in the public debate and the 
transparency
>required, perhaps you can further elucidate the choices made.
>
>
>
>With best wishes,
>
>
>
>
>
>Loet Leydesdorff
>
>
>
>  _____
>
>Loet Leydesdorff
>Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
>Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
> <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
><http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
>
>
>Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
>Beijing; Honorary Fellow  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University
>of Sussex
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