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Document categories in the ISI Web of Knowledge: Misunderstanding the Social Sciences?

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  • Anne-Wil Harzing

    (University of Melbourne)

Abstract

Thomson Reuter’s ISI Web of Knowledge (or ISI for short) is used in the majority of benchmarking analyses and bibliometric research projects. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the limitations of data provided by ISI. This article deals with a limitation that disproportionally affects the Social Sciences: ISI’s misclassification of journal articles containing original research into the “review” or “proceedings paper” category. I report on a comprehensive, 11 year analysis, of document categories for 27 journals in nine Social Science and Science disciplines. I show that although ISI’s “proceedings paper” and “review” classifications seem to work fairly well in the Sciences, they illustrate a profound misunderstanding of research and publication practices in the Social Sciences.

Suggested Citation

  • Anne-Wil Harzing, 2013. "Document categories in the ISI Web of Knowledge: Misunderstanding the Social Sciences?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(1), pages 23-34, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:94:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0738-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0738-1
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    Cited by:

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    10. Tomaz Bartol & Gordana Budimir & Doris Dekleva-Smrekar & Miro Pusnik & Primoz Juznic, 2014. "Assessment of research fields in Scopus and Web of Science in the view of national research evaluation in Slovenia," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1491-1504, February.
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    13. David I Stern, 2014. "High-Ranked Social Science Journal Articles Can Be Identified from Early Citation Information," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-11, November.
    14. Xie, Yundong & Wu, Qiang & Zhang, Peng & Li, Xingchen, 2020. "Information Science and Library Science (IS-LS) journal subject categorisation and comparison based on editorship information," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    15. Anne-Wil Harzing, 2015. "Health warning: might contain multiple personalities—the problem of homonyms in Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 2259-2270, December.
    16. Haunschild, Robin & Bornmann, Lutz, 2016. "Normalization of Mendeley reader counts for impact assessment," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 62-73.
    17. Thed Leeuwen & Rodrigo Costas & Clara Calero-Medina & Martijn Visser, 2013. "The role of editorial material in bibliometric research performance assessments," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(2), pages 817-828, May.
    18. Sánchez-Gil, Susana & Gorraiz, Juan & Melero-Fuentes, David, 2018. "Reference density trends in the major disciplines," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 42-58.
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    21. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "The relationship between the number of authors of a publication, its citations and the impact factor of the publishing journal: Evidence from Italy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 746-761.

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