Citation indexing systems and the future of scientific publications in Latin America

1
Citation indexing systems and the future of
scientific publications in Latin America

• Clemente Forero-Pineda
• Catalina Estrada-Mejía
• School of Management
• Universidad de los Andes
• Bogotá Colombia
• cfp_at_adm.uniandes.edu.co

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• When Eugene Garfield conceived citation indexing,
  in 1953 and 1955, he had several principles and a
  utopia of scientific communication in mind

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The principles

• 1. Science is communication
• It is often difficult to distinguish between
  mans actual knowledge and the ability to
  communicate that knowledge.
• E. Garfield
• (1953 dissertation outline manuscript).
• Comment Garfield conceives scientific literature
  as a mirror representation of science. One could
  take some distance from this view, and citation
  indexing would still have meaning!

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The principles

• 2. Validation of knowledge is the primary
  objetive of scientific information systems.
• E. Garfield (Science, 1955). Even if there were
  no other use for a citation indexing than that of
  minimizing the citation of poor data, the index
  would be well worth the effort required to
  compile it.
• This implies a process of selection in the
  communication among scientists.

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The principles

• 3. Fraud in scientific data ought to be
  eliminated...
• ... I propose a bibliographic system for science
  literature that can eliminate the uncritical
  citation of fraudulent, incomplete or obsolete
  data... (Garfield, 1955)

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Utopia

• 1. The utopia of scientific information should be
  multi-lingual and truly international
• this plan would hope to (2) facilitate
  polyglot indexes to the worlds scientific
  literature (3) permit indexes in any one
  language to the worlds scientific literature
  (4) help standardize indexes to the individual
  scientific journals, in the language of the
  reader
• E. Garfield (1953).

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• 2. Different regions of the world should have
  their own indexes
• Se podría tener una imagen más amplia y
  multidimensional de la investigación en América
  Latina y el Caribe si hubiera una base de datos
  que incluyera esas revistas. Sin embargo, esa
  base no existe todavía, aunque he insistido desde
  hace años en que la creación de un Índice
  Científico de Citación Latinoamericano (un SCI
  para América Latina) sería una labor
  interesante.
• Garfield 1995.
• The creation of a Latin American Scientific
  Index would be an interesting job.

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Utopia

• 3. In his preface to Garfields book, his friend,
  the great sociologist of science Robert K Merton
  completes the utopia
• ... the more widely scientists make their
  intellectual property freely available to others,
  the more securely it becomes identified as their
  property. For science is public not private
  knowledge.
• Open access becomes part of the utopia.

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Utopia

• 4. Indexes should recognize each other and
  integrate
• this plan would hope to... Provide a check on
  the coverage of individual articles and journals
  by various abstracting and indexing services
• Garfield 1953.

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But what happened with utopia?

• International access has improved, but
• language barriers are an issue in the sciences.
• The federation of regional indexes is far from
  complete.
• Open access remains utopia for scientists from
  many countries.Watch the figures

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The evolution that triggered the open access
movement worldwide
While price indexes and book prices grew 300,
the price of a basket of journals grew 1800 !
Source T.J. Walker, Florida Entomologist
Society, 1996, 1998.
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Important fractions of leading LA scientists
report problems in database access.
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Indexing, web-portals and visibility

• A recent survey of 92 scientific journals we have
  completed in 6 countries of Latin America
• Shows that isolated journals have no visibility,
  even if they have their own page.
• Journals entering Scielo improve visibility, even
  in ISI.
• Multiple Internet gateways are becoming the rule

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Number of Internet portals where 92 sci open
access journals are present

• The most frequent
• The journals own site
• Institutional site (University, Academy,
  Association)
• Scielo
• Bioline International
• Directory of Open Access Journals
• Red ALyC
• Imbiomed
• CRICYT-CONICET

More than 50 are in multiple Internet sites
Clemente Forero FAUA
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Major indexing services reporting citations

• ISI-Thomson 9.770 - active peer-reviewed
  journals. (http//scientific.thomson.com) since
  1900.
• Scielo 361 - active peer-reviewed journals.
  (http//www.scielo.org)
• PsycINFO 2.216 - 98 active peer-reviewed
  journals. (http//www.apa.org/psycinfo/about/covli
  st.ht)
• MEDLINE 5.164 active peer-reviewed journals
  (http//www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html)
• Elsevier Scopus 14,200 through licensing,
  including 531 open access in 2006 (21.074) -
  active peer-reviewed journals
• (http//info.scopus.com/detail/what/) . Links to
  Scirus but, for quality, selects documents with
  10 or more citations.
• Elsevier Science Direct 2.717 active
  peer-reviewed journals
• (http//www.sciencedirect.com/) uses Scopus.
  Includes accepted manuscripts.
• (even Google scholar offers a version (of
  citation tracking) Quint, 2006.)
• Only ISI and Scielo calculate Impact Factors.

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Latin American science in the new scenario of
scientific information

• The citation culture has had a profound impact in
  Latin American science
• A division of scientific communities in two
  sub-communities in each field and country.
• Under-representation in citation indexes.

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I. A divide in LA scientific communities

• One sub-community is committed almost exclusively
  to ISI journal publication (21/61 in our survey
  of the most cited in 6 countires of Latin
  America)
• the other is oriented towards locally relevant
  research topics, local audiences, impact on local
  public policies and local industries (21/61).
• A fraction of scientists attempts to do both,
  with a loss of productivity, but not necessarily
  of scientific impact (19/61).

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II. Sub-representation?

• Language distribution of journals in Scopus, with
  respect to Ulrichs core
• English, French, Chinese, Dutch and Russian are
  over-represented.
• German, Spanish and Italian are
  under-represented.
• (Scimago Group, 2006).
• Besides how complete is Ulrichs?

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Latin American journals in Ulrich

• 740 active refereed journals in 10 countries of
  Latin America appear in Ulrichs.
• 361 in Scielo
• 3/ 176 Brazilian journals in Scielo are not in
  Ulrich.
• 3/26 Argentinian.
• 2/36 Chilean.
• 2/30 Colombian.
• All Cuban (20), Venezuelian (28) and Spanish (31)
  in Scielo are in Ulrichs.
• Ulrichs coverage has improved significantly in
  the past 2 years.
• - 36 LA journals are in ISI.
• (http//scientific.thomson.com/mjl/)
• - 322 are in Scopus.
• (http//info.scopus.com/detail/what/).

Clemente Forero FAUA
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A proposal
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Long term trends and questions related to sci
communication

• Trends
• a) The need for new local knowledge is
  increasing.
• b) Industrial countries progressively need more
  knowledge coming from developing countries.
• c) Social sciences in developing countries are
  going through a process of balkanization.
• Question
• d) Is Bradfords law (significant scientific
  results are published in a small fraction of
  scientific journals) stronger or weaker today?
  (significant from whose perspective?).

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What do we want from a new scenario?

• Principles
• Faithful representation of science
• Validation and selection
• Minimization of fraudulent, incomplete and
  obsolete data.
• Utopian dreams
• Polyglot indexing.
• Universal access for all sci communities.
• Open access.

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Six conceivable scenarios for the future of
indexing

•     I.     Vegetative prolongation of the present
  scenario.
•    II.     Babel I each country implements
  national citation and citation count systems in
  local language.
• III.     Babel II citation systems by
  language. No interconnection.
•   IV.    A centralized system around ISI Thompson
  (or Scopus). All language systems and national
  indexation services become integrated, after a
  selection process, into ISIs different
  categories.
•    V.    Cold war confrontation between ISI and
  Scopus. Scopus would start publishing indicators,
  and a few regional or disciplinary systems would
  survive with the help of national or
  international subsidies.
•   VI.     An interconnected federated network of
  all or most language or disciplinary oriented
  citation indexing systems.

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Cold war or Federated network?

• Only two of these scenarios are actually highly
  likely to occur
• Cold war Scopus vs. ISI, which eventually could
  end up in a monopoly by one of them.
• A federated network. Through progressive
  agreements, the different systems would join in a
  decentralized network, much like
  telecommunication networks operate.

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A federated network of indexing systems

• Each system would remain economically
  independent.
• All the technology, software, license contract
  minutes, and all the economics has been designed.
• Quality level and criteria, as well as user
  language would be selected for information
  retrieval, citation tracking, indicator
  calculations and other functions.
• Ideally, one would wish full free access
  (Mertons scientific ethos calls for this), but
  perhaps this exceeds the laws of utopian
  thinking.
• Systems would still compete through group and
  individual pricing at the gateways. Internal
  transfer pricing would be the object of
  agreements.
  
  
  

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What would happen with principles?

• 1. Faithful representation The ability to
  communicate that knowledge would be in the hands
  of a much larger community.
• Validation and selection available on menu, with
  a multidimensional criterion.
• Minimization of fraud, etc. Wider scientific
  communities (including those of developing
  countries and other disciplines) would
  permanently be validating research.

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And what about the utopian agenda?

• Polyglot indexing enabled and facilitated
  through collaboration.
• Universal access for scientists from all
  communities decentralization has the potential
  to increase scientists access.
• Open access (for users) open access journals
  would be in a special macro-collection (similar
  to the open access directory, but with citation
  indexing). Paying systems would either subsidize
  them with a portion of their extra earnings
  induced by integration, or lowering their rates
  accordingly.
• Integration that is actually the key of
  federated networking of citation index systems.

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Once again cold war or federated network?

• Neither one is impossible, as illustrated by the
  following quote from an interview by Quint
  (2006) to Pringle, ISI-Thomson CEO
• I asked Pringle if he had considered whether
  Thomson ISI might license its data to other
  outlets, such as Elsevier Scopus. He said In
  fact, that was a path I probably would have
  recommended a year ago, but over the past year
  Ive been very impressed with the Web of Science
  performance...
• On the other hand, we continue to look at
  whether relationships make sense for us and our
  customers. We have no preconceived notions.

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Three embarassing questions and one proposal

• The questions
• Can Scielo, Pascal and other systems do anything
  to tilt the cold-war/federated-network balance?
• Can scientists and their academies?
• Can Unesco, European, Asian and developing
  country governments?

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The proposal

• (presented as an additional question)
• Can we join to call for a meeting of
  regional, disciplinary and global citation
  indexing systems and scientist organizations to
  think about federated networking?

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Citation indexing systems and the future of
scientific publications in Latin America
End

• Clemente Forero-Pineda
• Catalina Estrada-Mejía
• School of Management
• Universidad de los Andes
• Bogotá Colombia
• cfp_at_adm.uniandes.edu.co

Clemente Forero FAUA