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ACADEMIC CITATION INDICES AND DATABASES
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14420/en.2014.3.1
An academic citation index becomes very important at the present time. In simple terms, it is an index of relevance of research papers, that is how often academic pursuits of an author in his/her creative work are used in scholarly works. A sort of «importance» factor of scholarly works. An academic citation index serves as a communication tool of a citing person with an author of a work cited and revelation of an amount of citing of any given scholar's works.
In the process of creation of scholarly works an author studies in the first place creative works on analogous subject matter. It affords opportunity to be aware of a level of a topic scholarly development, its timeliness and in general, at which stage of scholarly knowledge the studied processes are. In writing an author uses conclusions of other authors which help him to come to results which an author achieves as a result of his work. On the basis of the aforementioned, an author refers to words and conclusions of academics which he used in writing his work. Citation index follows reference data and keeps their count, but with that citation index databases contain full-text materials as well. It affords authors an opportunity in study of some work to switch to references cited and study works referred to in studied work. Consequently, citation index is useful not only as reference count and a sort of tool of determination of relevancy of scholarly works for society, but as a library where if necessary one can find required materials.
Today we have rather substantial volume of manifold citation systems of a sort of databases which include works of various authors in various academic areas, such as physics, chemistry, legal sciences, biology etc. Here are some of them: Web of Science, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, Astrophysics, PubMed, Mathematics, Chemical Abstracts, Springer, Agris, GeoRef. The largest are WEB OF SCIENCE and SCOPUS. It is worth mentioning that magazines included in the said citation systems automatically fall within the list of magazines recommended by the RF Higher Attestation Commission.
The citation index traces its roots to as early as 1873, legal sciences were the first (Shepard's Citations). After that the Institute for Scientific Information in 1960 introduces citation index for articles published in academic periodicals, «Science
Citation Index (SCI)». Subsequently social sciences were also included in CSI («Social Sciences Citation Index», SSCI), and arts and humanities («Arts and Humanities Citation Index», AHCI). From 2006, other systems similar to the above mentioned, such as: Google, Scholar etc., start to emerge.
From 2005, «Russian Science Citation Index» (RSCI) is created in Academic electronic library (AEL, eLIBRARYRU). The project goal consists in formation of a national bibliographic database on academic periodicals. Analytical tool ScienceIndex has been developed. The RSCI project is being developed by company «Academic electronic library» (elibrary.ru). Currently the RSCI contains an immense amount of scientific information, almost 18 million research articles which are accessible on web portal eLIBRARYRU, about 3,200 scientific and technical journals more than 2,000 of which are in the public domain. Besides Russian magazines, international magazines are also located on the eLIBRARY RU platform. Availability of such amount of scientific information is indisputably of a huge value for the whole scientific world.
The database Web of Science is the most extensive abstract database and offers to researchers, administrators, teachers and students a quick access to quality interdisciplinary relevant information. It unites 3 bases: Science / Social Sciences / Arts&Humanities Citation Index. Those resources do not contain full texts of articles, but include references to full texts in primary sources and list of all references present in each publication, which allows one to receive within a short time the most complete bibliography on subject of interest (archive depth is 20 years).
Web of science comprises more than 50 million entries in 12,500 most influential magazines all over the world, including those in the public domain,
120,000 conference proceedings in the area of natural, social, human sciences and Arts. Magazines in Web of science undergo rigorous selection process. They should conform with all publishing regulations and standards and should be international as well, content of magazines themselves and naturally their citedness are subject to a rigorous analysis.
It is worthy of note that for Russian scientists in 2012 from February 1 to April 30, 2012, free access to Web of Knowledge was provided, which separates that service from many other foreign abstract databases on a paying basis. Currently many Russian universities set for themselves a task to introduce Russian academics to that database, which is achieved by provision of incentives to higher education institutions staff themselves. For example, Moscow State University incites only for publications in 25% leading magazines by impact factor (taking into account topical area);
Ural Federal University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology: incitement for publications depending on impact factor: publications in more impact-bearing magazines provide higher benefits.
There is available a Russian-language site Thomson Reuters (http://wokinfo.com/russian/). That site is developed especially for Russian scientists who would like to work with databases Web of science and is targeted
Tengiz Tatishvili. Academic citation indices and databases
at education. It contains various training aids, presentations, video clips, webinars etc.
One more of the most authoritative bases is Scopus. The database contains citations and abstracts of articles published in more than 14,200 reviewed journals,
4,000 of which have international publishers. Scopus tracks many magazines and comprises a wide range of disciplines. In addition to references and abstracts, Scopus also provides bibliography of article and references to articles which were used in the original.
Scopus is an interdisciplinary database, includes articles on chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, social, biological, agricultural sciences, psychology, economics, and sciences about environment. Scopus also provides information about citedness with a reference to article. From 1996 Scopus provides a list of articles contained in reference list of each article.
The database Scopus takes an increasing meaning for Russian scholars. The Higher Attestation Commission (c 2010 the RF Higher Attestation Commission) has established a sufficient condition for inclusion of publication in the «List of leading peer-reviewed academic magazines and publications in which basic academic results of dissertations for a doctor's and a candidate's degree should be presented» its indexation in one of two leading world databases of tracking citedness: Web of Knowledge (Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index) or Scopus.
In January 2010 St. Petersburg State University brought into force an order «About consideration of citedness of academic and teaching and guiding works for the purposes of competitive selection for an academic teaching position in StPBSU». According to that order, claimants upon filling positions of teachers are to present data about citedness of works published by them in the last five years, in scientometrical databases Web of Knowledge, Scopus and RSCI .
For authors having more than one publication in Scopus, a special profile -register entry is made. That register entry contains information about an author: first name, last name, place of employment, area of research interests, number of publications, citings etc. A similar opportunity is available also for magazines and institutions. Those profiles also provide information about number of employees who are authors and have more than one publication, address of institution, list of publications in which the author is published etc.
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