Problems with Web of Science

[Pikas, Christina K.]

Ben Wagner of Buffalo and Dana Roth of CalTech have pointed out several such abbreviation issues on the SLA Physics-Astro-Math Division listserv (ex: https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=PAMNET;zll5NQ;201208241152390400 ). Some stem from changes at the publisher and some are just errors within WoS. There's also an issue when standard abbreviations in the field and used in references (ex ApJ) do not match the WoS abbreviation.  

As far as I know, you can report the error to TR and they will make a correction if they agree there's an error and it isn't just a reflection of a change in title or change in policy. I believe this is the correct form for the report: http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/techsupport/datachange/ 

Christina

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Christina K Pikas
Librarian
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Christina.Pikas at jhuapl.edu
(240) 228 4812 (DC area)
(443) 778 4812 (Baltimore area)



-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Newman
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 9:33 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Problems with Web of Science


I wonder if any of the Web of Science experts on this list could offer some advice.

I've been looking at citation statistics for a subset of papers in my field and find serious errors in the WOS citations.  I'm wondering if this is a known issue and if it is likely to be fixed.

As an example of what I'm talking about, consider this paper:

   Infection dynamics on scale-free networks, R. M. May and A. L. Lloyd,
   Physical Review E 64, 066112 (2001)

A regular WOS search for this paper says that it was cited 72 times between
2001 and 2007, but zero times after that.  This looked odd to me, so I did a "cited reference search" for the same paper, which reveals what the problem is.  In cited reference search, the citations for this paper are divided between two variants (as is often the case with cited reference search), with one variant corresponding to the main WOS entry (the one with
72 citations), and the other not.  Both variants are correct in this case (no typos).  The only difference I can see is that the main WOS entry uses an abbreviated journal name "PHYS REV E", while the variant entry uses the full journal name "Physical Review E".  Other than that they appear to be basically the same.

But here's the issue: the "variant" entry has 209 citations -- by far the majority of citations to this paper, and all citations after 2007.  In other words a straightforward search for this paper in WOS misses almost all (74 percent) of citations.  This is just one example paper, but I have found a number of other similar examples.

Does anyone know what is going on here and if there is a way to fix it?

Mark Newman