Thelwall, M. orcid.org/0000-0001-6065-205X and Pinfield, S. (2024) The accuracy of field classifications for journals in Scopus. Scientometrics, 129 (2). pp. 1097-1117. ISSN 0138-9130
Abstract
Journal field classifications in Scopus are used for citation-based indicators and by authors choosing appropriate journals to submit to. Whilst prior research has found that Scopus categories are occasionally misleading, it is not known how this varies for different journal types. In response, we assessed whether specialist, cross-field and general academic journals sometimes have publication practices that do not match their Scopus classifications. For this, we compared the Scopus narrow fields of journals with the fields that best fit their articles’ titles and abstracts. We also conducted qualitative follow-up to distinguish between Scopus classification errors and misleading journal aims. The results show sharp field differences in the extent to which both cross-field and apparently specialist journals publish articles that match their Scopus narrow fields, and the same for general journals. The results also suggest that a few journals have titles and aims that do not match their contents well, and that some large topics spread themselves across many relevant fields. Thus, the likelihood that a journal’s Scopus narrow fields reflect its contents varies substantially by field (although without systematic field trends) and some cross-field topics seem to cause difficulties in appropriately classifying relevant journals. These issues undermine citation-based indicators that rely on journal-level classification and may confuse scholars seeking publishing venues.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Academic journals; scholarly publishing; journal classification system; text similarity; TF-IDF |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 11 Dec 2023 14:17 |
Last Modified: | 14 Feb 2024 12:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11192-023-04901-4 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:206114 |