Severe Inconsistencies Web of Science V4 / V5

[Juan Gorraiz]

Dear Loet,

this issue has nothing to do with the dynamics of the database.
At the moment obviously errors occur in the processing of the data.
Different citation counts are obtained depending on the origin of the
information, e.g. either the full record or the citation report.
Apart from this articles are incorrectly ordered for the calculation of
the h-index.
Furthermore a couple of scientists have already contacted us and
complained about noticed errors in the bibliographic records, where
co-authors were erased but the records still remained in place (therefore
independent from journal coverage!).
Consequently the new version of Web of Science should not be used
for any evaluation purposes at the moment.

Best regards,

Juan Gorraiz


On Mi, 20.07.2011, 19:41, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
> Dear Hermann,
>
>
>
> The database is always dynamic. Journals are added and sometimes
> backtracked
> from the perspective of hindsight. I would not expect V4 and V5 to be very
> similar. For example, my own publication record went up with 10 new
> publications. J
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Loet
>
>
>
>   _____
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
>
> Professor, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR),
> Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam.
> Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111
>  <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
> <http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
>
>
>
> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
> [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Hermann Schier
> Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 4:17 PM
> To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
> Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Severe Inconsistencies Web of Science V4 / V5
>
>
>
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
> the relaunch of Web of Science this week was not really a smooth
> transition
> from
> V4 to V5. Today the system starts to work again but now we encounter
> inconsistencies in citation counts between V4 and V5 which prohibits the
> use
> Web of Science at the moment.
>
> I compiled as example a comparison of the the articles in the Hirsch core
> of
> Manuel Cardona, who is a well known solid state physicist.
>
> An citation report in both version brings up a stunning difference in
> Hirsch
> factor: 99 versus 89
>
>
> Results found
>
> Sum of the Times Cited
>
> h-index
>
>
> WoS V4
>
> 1265
>
> 46514
>
> 99
>
>
> WoS V5
>
> 1308
>
> 46605
>
> 89
>
>
> Then I compared the the articles one by one and found a lot of highly
> cited
> papers are missing in V5,
> please have a look in the attached excel file.
>
> At the moment I have no clue for this unsettling findings, but most of the
> articles are from Physical Review series
> where citation linking was always notoriously clumsy.
>
> Does anybody else encounter similar problems?
> Web of Science is a major resource for our scientists and it is really sad
> that I have strongly advice against usage of Web of Science at the moment.
>
> Regards
>
> Hermann
>
>
>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Hermann Schier
> Max-Planck-Institut fuer Festkoerperforschung
> Informationsvermittlung der CPT-Sektion
> Heisenbergstr. 1, D-70569 Stuttgart
> Tel. ++-(0)711-689-1284 FAX ++-(0)711-689-1292
> e-mail: h.schier at fkf.mpg.de
> --------------------------------------------------
>