A colleague sent me the latest issue of Research Trends – a bi-monthly newsletter from Elsevier with short features on bibliometrics. Cynics might say it was a thinly veiled marketing ploy to help embed their Scopus database as a worthy tool for bibliometric work, but it is useful nonetheless.
Actually a study commissioned by HEFCE and published last year found that Scopus should be considered as a potential alternative to the Web of Science for the purposes of the REF, though given the recent purchase of Evidence Ltd (the company setting up the REF system) by Thomson Reuters (the company who publish Web of Science), perhaps Elsevier still have worries on this score.
Anyway, Research Trends is just 8 pages long and is quite a good read even if you’re not that interested in bibliometrics. This issue has articles about
- the various recent studies into the reading and citing behaviour of scientists that seem to indicate they are reading more widely but citing more narrowly
- studies into the productivity of female scientists versus male scientists
- the need for robust business intelligence data to help institutes win funding
Finally a clutch of more predictable items on Nobel laureates and country rankings.
