silent changes in WoS

[Jonathan Levitt]

Dear Colleagues, 
 
Vladimir has highlighted a problem of concern to me as a bibliometrician using WoS data.  Whilst I understand that journals may be added retroactively to Web of Science databases, I was astonished to read that that the same query can result in a 12% difference in the reported number of matches.
 
Could WoS assure bibliometricians that they will seek to avoid making large retroactive changes to the contents of the SSCI and SCI?   I would not like to have to add to my articles the limitation that my findings could be affected by large changes to the contents of WoS of which I am unaware?
 
Kind regards,
Jonathan Levitt.
  
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Date:    Thu, 5 Feb 2009 06:37:46 -0500
From:    =?windows-1251?Q?Vladimir_Pislyakov?= <pislyakov at HSE.RU>
Subject: silent changes in WoS
 
 
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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