Abstract

The new bibliometric product announced by Thomson Reuters, Book citation index, is described. The authors discuss how this powerful company can carry out this big project (big science) and also improve its other products, taking advantage of the many studies undertaken by small bibliometric research teams (little science) in previous years. The new index promises to be successful because books are the main communication vehicle in the humanities.

Abstract

The new interface of the Web of Science  (Thomson Reuters) enables users to retrieve sets larger than 100,000 documents in a single search. This makes it possible to compare publication trends for China, the USA, EU-27, and smaller countries with the data in the Scopus  (Elsevier) database. China no longer grew exponentially during the 2000s, but linearly. Contrary to previous predictions on the basis of exponential growth, the cross-over of the lines for China and the USA is postponed to the next decade (after 2020) according to this data. These long extrapolations, however, should be used only as indicators and not as predictions. Uncertainty in trends can be specified using the coefficient of determination of the regression (R2) and confidence intervals. Along with the dynamics in the publication trends, one also has to take into account the dynamics of the databases used for the measurement.

Abstract

The new interface of the Web of Science  (Thomson Reuters) enables users to retrieve sets larger than 100,000 documents in a single search. This makes it possible to compare publication trends for China, the USA, EU-27, and smaller countries with the data in the Scopus  (Elsevier) database. China no longer grew exponentially during the 2000s, but linearly. Contrary to previous predictions on the basis of exponential growth, the cross-over of the lines for China and the USA is postponed to the next decade (after 2020) according to this data. These long extrapolations, however, should be used only as indicators and not as predictions. Uncertainty in trends can be specified using the coefficient of determination of the regression (R2) and confidence intervals. Along with the dynamics in the publication trends, one also has to take into account the dynamics of the databases used for the measurement.

Abstract

Visibility in the Web of Science databases differs between the hard sciences and the social sciences, and between scholarship in English and in other languages. Quantitative data for 2006 are offered for SCI, SSCI, and AHCI, along with the author’s observations. The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) has developed suggestions to reduce the marginalization of the social sciences and Spanish liberal arts in citations.