silent changes in WoS

Loet Leydesdorff loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET
Fri Feb 6 01:51:56 EST 2009


Dear colleagues, 

I checked the effect for the set which I can assess most easily and that is
for my own papers. Five full articles from the past have now been converted
into "Proceedings Papers". Among these two articles were from
Scientometrics: 

Title: Scientometrics and communication theory: Towards theoretically
informed indicators
Author(s): Leydesdorff L, VandenBesselaar P
Source: SCIENTOMETRICS   Volume: 38   Issue: 1   Pages: 155-174   Published:
JAN 1997
Times Cited: 15

Title: THE DELINEATION OF SPECIALITIES IN TERMS OF JOURNALS USING THE
DYNAMIC JOURNAL SET OF THE SCI
Author(s): LEYDESDORFF L, COZZENS SE
Source: SCIENTOMETRICS   Volume: 26   Issue: 1   Pages: 135-156   Published:
JAN 1993
Times Cited: 17

These two papers were not proceedings papers. I have no idea why their
status was changed. The other three papers were also not Proceedings papers.

Best wishes, 


Loet 
________________________________

Loet Leydesdorff 
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), 
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. 
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 
loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics 
> [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Juan Gorraiz
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 5:37 PM
> To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] silent changes in WoS
> 
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> 
> Many regular journals are publishing "proceedings papers" in special 
> issues. If these papers were considered before as "articles" and have 
> been consequently changed to "proceedings papers", there may 
> be changes 
> in the JCR Metrics! If they were not changed, they are differently 
> processed from the other proceedings publications!
> 
> JCR Metrics is perhaps not so strongly influenced but a lot 
> of analyses 
> performed by users (and considering the category "articles") 
> may not be 
> anymore reproducible and so lacking of scientific character.
> 
> Another problem is how the JCR Metrics will be defined in the future, 
> including or not the Proceedings. However, as we already reported, 
> citations coming from some Proceedings (for example 
> Proceedings of the 
> IEEE and some other Series) were always (!) considered 
> calculating the 
> Impact Factor of the core Journals but not consequently (only 
> citations 
> from "some" issues indexed in WoS).
> Now, there is an opportunity to consider consequently all the 
> citations 
> coming from the Proceedings. But this is also a controversial 
> subject: 
> Is then the selection criteria (used to define the core ISI-journals) 
> also valid for the Proceedings (even if they never before had IFs)?
> 
> Kind regards
> Juan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> **********************************************
> 
> 
> Vladimir Pislyakov schrieb:
> > Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> > http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> > 
> > It is interesting what Thomson will make with the next 
> edition of JCR, when
> > it appears in June. Either they should change the text of 
> methodology of IF
> > calculations (add "Proceedings papers" to the citable 
> items), or IFs will
> > loose their continuity from 2007 to 2008 (e.g. some of the 
> 2006 papers will
> > be "citable" in 2007 IFs and non-citable in 2008 IFs 
> calculations). It is
> > especially important for journals with high share of 
> "proceedings papers".
> > 
> > Somehow, the change to the WoS content is rather important 
> (e.g. many of us,
> > I suppose, limit their investigations to this or that 
> document type), so it
> > is natural to expect a clear and detailed explanation from 
> Thomson what's
> > going on and what will be in the future.
> > 
> > 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 15:23:34 +0000, Craig, Iain - Oxford
> > <iain.craig at WILEY.COM> wrote:
> > 
> >> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> >> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> >>
> >>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
> >>
> >> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> >> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> >>
> >> 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
> >> **********************************************
> >> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------------
> >> This email (and any attachment) is confidential, may be 
> legally privileged
> > and is intended solely for the
> >> use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. 
> If you are not the
> > intended recipient please do
> >> not disclose, copy or take any action in reliance on it. 
> If you have
> > received this message in error please
> >> tell us by reply and delete all copies on your system.
> >>
> >> Although this email has been scanned for viruses you 
> should rely on your
> > own virus check as the sender
> >> accepts no liability for any damage arising out of any bug or virus
> > infection. Please note that email
> >> traffic data may be monitored and that emails may be 
> viewed for security
> > reasons.
> >> Blackwell Publishing Limited is a private limited company 
> registered in
> > England with registered number 180277.
> >> Registered office address: The Atrium, Southern Gate, 
> Chichester, West
> > Sussex, PO19 8SQ.
> >> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------------------
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> **********************************************
> 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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