silent changes in WoS

Thu Feb 5 10:59:30 EST 2009

Ok - I'm confused.  

I look at a paper in WoS and it's got, say, 100 citations.  When I list the citing papers, only like 80 are in the list.  It turns out that the other 20 citations came from proceedings papers, I guess, and my institution does not subscribe to this proceedings citation thingy.  So these are mystery citations.... Actually, if I understood this a little better, I'd probably say what the impact is:  none or huge?

Christina

-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu] On Behalf Of Craig, Iain - Oxford
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 10:24 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] silent changes in WoS

>From what I can see, the number of citable items doesn't change; proceedings papers are now being added to the numbers of articles and reviews. So the net effect on JCR metrics should be neutral.

Iain

-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Juan Gorraiz
Sent: 05 February 2009 15:04
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] silent changes in WoS

Dear Vladimir,

this is not only an ususual thing, but a very sensititive issue!
The value of many indicators based on number of articles (like Impact
Factor, etc) may then change abruptly!!!

Kind regards,
Juan

**********************************************
Dr. Juan Gorraiz
University of Vienna
Library and archive services
Bibliometrics Department
Boltzmanngasse 5
A-1090 Wien

Tel.:
+43-1-4277-27609
+43-66460277-27609
Fax:
+43-1-4277-27650
mailto:
juan.gorraiz at univie.ac.at
**********************************************

http://personalabteilung.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=10896
Vladimir Pislyakov schrieb:
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
> Dear Iain,
>
> Thank you, I tried to test it on several years and this method seems to
> produce results very close to the figures obtained earlier. It means that in
> October 2008 about 12% of "Articles" changed their document type to
> "Proceedings Paper", unusual thing.
>
> Kind regards,
> Vladimir
>
> Vladimir Pislyakov
> Assistant Director for Electronic Resources Management
> Higher School of Economics Library
> 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
>
> ===============
> On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 12:40:29 +0000, Craig, Iain - Oxford
> <iain.craig at WILEY.COM> wrote:
>
>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>
>> Dear Vladimir
>>
>> If you extend your search to include document type = proceedings papers,
> you should recover your missing papers.
>> With best wishes
>>
>> Iain
>>
>>
>> Iain Craig
>> Research & Analysis Group
>>
>> Wiley-Blackwell
>> John Wiley & Sons Ltd
>> 9600 Garsington Road
>> Oxford, OX4 2DQ
>> United Kingdom
>>
>> E-mail: iain.craig at wiley.com
>> Phone: +44 (0)1865 476301
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
> [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Vladimir Pislyakov
>> Sent: 05 February 2009 11:38
>> To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
>> Subject: [SIGMETRICS] silent changes in WoS
>>
>> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> Have anyone noticed changes of the publication indicators in the Web of
>> Science databases when they transformed "ISI Proceedings" into "Conference
>> Proceedings Citation Index" (now a part of the WoS)?
>>
>> For example. Before this transformation, in September 2008, we counted
>> number of Russian papers of the type "Article" published in 2006 (in SCIE
>> and SSCI databases). It was 23367. After that, in November (transformation
>> of the Proceeedings took place in the middle of October) the same search
>> produced a much smaller figure. Now the same search string
>>
>> (CU=Russia) AND (PY=2006) AND Document Type=(Article)
>>
>> produces just 20601 documents.
>>
>> It may be suggested that some of the documents have changed their "Document
>> Type" field in the process of merging of new Proceedings Index, and so
>> "Articles" got some other type.
>>
>> It is very sad for us, because every year we publish in print statistics on
>> Russian publication output by document types and these changes result in the
>> loss of coherence of our yearly data. Have someone else confronted these
>> silent changes in WoS? Is there any way to overcome these inconsistencies?
>> There is even no note on WoK platfrom regarding these changes.
>>
>> Vladimir Pislyakov
>> Assistant Director for Electronic Resources Management
>> Higher School of Economics Library
>> 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
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--
**********************************************
Dr. Juan Gorraiz

University of Vienna
Library and archive services
Bibliometrics Department

Boltzmanngasse 5
A-1090 Wien

Tel.:
+43-1-4277-27609
+43-66460277-27609
Fax:
+43-1-4277-27650
mailto:
juan.gorraiz at univie.ac.at
**********************************************
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