[Web4lib] A Comparative Study of Scientific Journal Databases in the Social Sciences and the Humanities

[McKiernan, Gerard [LIB]]

Colleagues/

A Most Impressive Study !!!

/Gerry 

JournalBase *- *A Comparative International Study of Scientific Journal Databases in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH) / Michèle Dassa et Christine Kosmopoulos / _Cybergeo, the electronic European Journal of Geography_ / 2009 

[ http://www.cybergeo.eu/index22492.html  ] / Full Text > [ http://www.cybergeo.eu/pdf/22492  ]

Presented for the first time in a comparative table are the contents of the commercial databases that inventory the journals in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH), of the /Web of Science/ (published by Thomson Reuters) and of /Scopus /(published by Elsevier), as well as of the non-commercial lists such as the /European Reference Index for Humanities /(ERIH) (published by the /European Science Foundation /and the French /Agence pour l'Evaluation de la Recherche et de l'Enseignement Supérieur /(AERES).

With some 10,000 titles, this is an almost exhaustive overview of the wealth of publications in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, at last made available in this table. The multiple assignments reveal the multidisciplinarity of the journals, which is quite frequent in SSH, but also sometimes the incoherence of databases that have not been corrected.

To get an idea of the representativeness of the OA journals, the updated version of July includes the information about the DOAJ.

At this stage, Open Access journals represent less than 0,4% of the total of the journals indexed in the four sources (Web of Science, Scopus, ERIH, AERES). It means that about a thousand of OA journals in SSH registered in the DOAJ are not included.

The final objective of this project, which concerns the entire international community of the Social Sciences and the Humanities, is to put online, in a bilingual English/French version, the database of /JournalBase /in interactive mode on a collaborative platform, as well as the final report of the study, so that the decision-makers, the scientists, the experts in scientific information have access to up-to-date information, and so that they may contribute to forward movement in the reflection on these questions, through the exchange of experiences and of good working practices.
A more completed version will be presented online in the next few months.


[ http://www.cybergeo.eu/index22492.html ] / Full Text > [ http://www.cybergeo.eu/pdf/22492 ] 


/Gerry 

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

 
gerrymck at iastate.edu   

 
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