[Thomson Reuters response to Larsen & von Ins (in press)]

Mon May 3 12:31:42 EDT 2010

Ok. This indicates that I'm not the only one who is confused. I only have access to the online version, not having licensed a CD-ROM for my analysis work.
-  Apparently it's not correct to say that SCIE is the online version of SCI.  Is there an offline batch download or mail-a-hard-drive version of the SCIE?
- Do the national labs and others that have locally loaded versions get the SCI or SCIE?
- You all seriously still PRINT the SCI?  Really? Wow. (not a serious question)
- Presumably which version you're using makes a huge difference to your analysis and conclusions - do all authors indicate which they're using (I know some do)?
- Are the National Science Indicators really using SCI or really using SCIE? I know some European countries use Thomson Reuters data - are they all using the same data? All SCI, all SCIE, some of each, no one knows?

Christina Pikas

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Christina K Pikas
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The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
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From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu] On Behalf Of James Testa
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 11:30 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
Subject: [SIGMETRICS]

This is  in response to The rate of growth in scientific publications and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index by Peder Olsesen Larsen and Markus von Inus1. While I strongly agree that citation indexes should reflect the current trends in the scholarly publishing community, I must disagree with their findings because they are not based on accurate data.

The Authors have derived their figures and conclusions from the SCI (Science Citation Index), a subset of the SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded).  The SCI is intentionally cultivated to be a relatively small collection of high impact journals and excellent regional journals.  The SCIE, on the other hand,  is a comprehensive citation index covering all science journals selected by Thomson Reuters through its Journal Selection Process.  Additionally, the authors did not take into account that conference proceedings are indexed primarily in the CPCI (Conference Proceedings Citation Index), at a rate of nearly 400,000 records from approximately 12,000 conferences each year.

I have provided a brief commentary that describes and quantifies the content of the major indexes in the Web of Science. I would invite the authors and any others who are interested to view it here<http://community.thomsonreuters.com/t5/Citation-Impact-Center/Web-of-Science-Coverage-Expansion/ba-p/10663>. I welcome any feedback or further discussion on the subject.

1.       Larsen, P.O. and vo Ins, M. "The rate of growth in scientific publications and the decline of coverage provided by Science Citation Index."  Scientometrics. Online First, published 10 March 2010.   DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0202-z<http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/2531345r116v3660/?p=e51d977a30124382bc1888ab01ee9630&pi=26>

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