The development of policy for the SCOPUS Citation System: Part 1: the work of the Content Selection Advisory Board 2010-2011

Abstract

Bibliometrics is a statistical science which has a profound influence on behaviours and resource allocation across the global academic ecosystem. It affects the allocation of energies and resources by researchers, authors, journals, publishers, universities, corporations and governments. Bibliometrics is primarily a product of two major information systems: The Web of Science, from Clarivate Analytics, and SCOPUS from Elsevier BV of the Netherlands. Both products are hugely complex systems. They must be managed and organised in an ordered and structured manner to be effective, through policies which describe the rules of content accrual, processing and delivery to its customers. Trust and Quality Assurance are central to the societal and commercial value of bibliometric systems. The designers of SCOPUS, with which I am most familiar, determined at the outset in 2003-2004 that content accrual would be managed through an external board of advisors, the SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board (CSAB). I have been privileged to be a member of the CSAB as the Subject Chair for Medicine since the outset of the current CSAB programme in 2009. This role has engaged me in the development of the SCOPUS Title Evaluation Platform (STEP); the major expansion and diversification of SCOPUS content; the diversification of bibliometrics; the growth of open access publishing; the move from subscription based to article processing fee based commerce; and the massive growth of sophisticated publication fraud; and the emergence of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence systems. In this essay, I seek to describe the work of the Board in terms of the development of its policy framework over the formative period 2010-2011.