silent changes in WoS

[Loet Leydesdorff]

> 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.

Thee problem at the level of macro-statistics seems now to be solved: 

  	
23,490
	cu=russia and py=2006 AND Document Type=(Article OR Proceedings
Paper)
Databases=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI Timespan=All Years
	
	This is virtually the same as you had before the changes (23,367). 

The real problem seems to me that more than 10% error was introduced in the
document types. Articles were arbitrarily changed into Proceedings Papers. 

Perhaps, one of our colleagues at ThomsonReuters can explain what happened? 

Best wishes, 


Loet
________________________________

Loet Leydesdorff 
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
Tel. +31-20-525 6598; fax: +31-842239111
loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 


Visiting Professor 2007-2010, ISTIC, Beijing; Honorary Fellow 2007-2010,
SPRU, University of Sussex 
Now available: The Knowledge-Based Economy: Modeled, Measured, Simulated,
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Scientometrics

 


> 
> 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 
>