Use of Non-Social Work Journals in Social Work Research: Results of a Citation Analysis

Social work research and teaching draw on the literature of other disciplines. While the use of interdisciplinary sources has been discussed at length and citation patterns in social work literature have been studied, no research has identified specific sources from other disciplines that are important for social work scholarship. Based on analysis of citations from core social work journals, several journals from both social work and other disciplines are identified as important to social work. Interdisciplinary citing patterns are discussed, and the coverage of various subjects in PsycINFO, SocINDEX, Social Work Abstracts, and Social Services Abstracts is compared.     

Psychological Abstracts:

A brief history of Psychological Abstracts is presented, and the development of this index over its nearly one-hundred year history is described. The various concerns and problems of both the publisher and users of the psychological literature are reported, and present and future solutions are discussed. Appended is an 18-item annotated bibliography.     

The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms:

The First Edication of The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms was published in 1974 by the American Psycholigical Association to answer the need for controlled vocabulary to represent precissely the literature of psychology and related disciplines contained in Psychological Abstracts and the PsychINFO database. As the field of psychology has grown and evolved, five subsequent editions of the Thesaurus have improved and extended the original vocabulary of 4000 postable and nonpostable terms. In addition, several featues have been added, including a rotated alphabetical terms section, scope notes, posting notes, and, in the new Sixth Edition (1991), an index term clusters option. In maintaining the Thesaurus, PsychINFO's indexing staff seeks to reflect the ever-changing field of psychology and the literature that describes it.     

Communication and Cooperation in Psychology Collection Development in a Large University:

This paper describes Selectors with Collection Overlap in Psychology Entente (SCOPE), a group of bibliographers at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, and the process used to identify gaps and overlaps in psychology collection development. The project included informal meetings, the development of a directory, and creation of a worksheet correlating Psychological Abstracts classified headings with call numbers and Research Libraries Group (RLG) conspectus levels. The process is compared to Hale's theoretical framework from library research.     

Overlaps of multiple database retrieval and citation tracking in dementia care research: a methodological study

Objective:We aimed to determine overlaps and optimal combination of multiple database retrieval and citation tracking for evidence synthesis, based on a previously conducted scoping review on facilitators and barriers to implementing nurse-led interventions in dementia care.Methods:In our 2019 scoping review, we performed a comprehensive literature search in eight databases (CENTRAL, CINAHL, Embase, Emcare, MEDLINE, Ovid Nursing Database, PsycINFO, and Web of Science Core Collection) and used citation tracking. We retrospectively analyzed the coverage and overlap of 10,527 retrieved studies published between 2015 and 2019. To analyze database overlap, we used cross tables and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA).Results:Of the retrieved studies, 6,944 were duplicates and 3,583 were unique references. Using our search strategies, considerable overlaps can be found in some databases, such as between MEDLINE and Web of Science Core Collection or between CINAHL, Emcare, and PsycINFO. Searching MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Web of Science Core Collection and using citation tracking were necessary to retrieve all included studies of our scoping review.Conclusions:Our results can contribute to enhancing future search practice related to database selection in dementia care research. However, due to limited generalizability, researchers and librarians should carefully choose databases based on the research question. More research on optimal database retrieval in dementia care research is required for the development of methodological standards.     

Is Google Scholar useful for the evaluation of non‐English scientific journals? The case of Chinese journals

This study determined how useful Google Scholar (GS) is for the evaluation of non‐English journals based on a sample of 150 Chinese journals listed in the Report on Chinese Academic Journals Evaluation of Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation (2013–2014). This study investigated two disciplines: Library, Information & Documentation Science and Metallurgical Engineering & Technology. We collected data from GS and the Chongqing VIP database to evaluate GS as a citation database for Chinese journals on its resource coverage, journal ranking, and citation data. We found that GS covered 100% of the sample journals but indexed 22% more article records than the number of articles published. The ranking of Chinese journals by GS Metrics was not suitable to present a dependable ranking of Chinese journals. GS appeared suitable to provide an alternative source of Chinese citation data, even though there existed coverage problems, including article duplication and citation omission and potential duplication. The GS Metric average citation provided results highly correlated to traditional citation results, showing that it would be suitable for evaluating Chinese journals.     

Google Scholar and Web of Science: Examining gender differences in citation coverage across five scientific disciplines

Many studies demonstrate differences in the coverage of citing publications in Google Scholar (GS) and Web of Science (WoS). Here, we examine to what extent citation data from the two databases reflect the scholarly impact of women and men differently. Our conjecture is that WoS carries an indirect gender bias in its selection criteria for citation sources that GS avoids due to criteria that are more inclusive. Using a sample of 1250 U.S. researchers in Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Cardiology and Chemistry, we examine gender differences in the average citation coverage of the two databases. We also calculate database-specific h-indices for all authors in the sample. In repeated simulations of hiring scenarios, we use these indices to examine whether women's appointment rates increase if hiring decisions rely on data from GS in lieu of WoS. We find no systematic gender differences in the citation coverage of the two databases. Further, our results indicate marginal to non-existing effects of database selection on women's success-rates in the simulations. In line with the existing literature, we find the citation coverage in WoS to be largest in Cardiology and Chemistry and smallest in Political Science and Sociology. The concordance between author-based h-indices measured by GS and WoS is largest for Chemistry followed by Cardiology, Political Science, Sociology and Economics.     

Librarianship and Information Science in the Maghreb 1966–1999: An Annotated Bibliography

This work is an annotated bibliography that consists of articles, books, conference papers, dissertations, reports, etc. published in various library and information science forums on the subject of librarianship in the Maghreb. The goal of preparing this work is to provide a list of citations with abstracts that librarians, library students, and library scholars can use to perform research within this subject area and further the body of knowledge. The research methodology that was used to find these citations involved searching the database versions of ERIC, Dissertations Abstracts Online, and Library Literature within the online public access catalog of the Auburn University library system. It also involved searching the online databases of Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), British Education Index, andEducation Abstracts within the DIALOG database as well as the respective print versions of these resources. While this work is by no means an exhaustive critique of the entire Maghrebi library and information science literature, it does strive to be comprehensive in terms of its country-by-country analysis of librarianship and information science within the region. In providing a citation for a non-English language work, the English equivalent of the title of that work will be given next to the non-English title.     

Growth and change of the world’s chemical literature as reflected inChemical abstracts

Chemical Abstracts, published by the American Chemical Society, has abstracted the world's published literature of chemistry and related disciplines since 1907. The increase in the content ofChemical Abstracts and the sources of the publications it has abstracted over the years reflected the growth and changing international patterns of research and development in chemical science and technology in the twentieth century.     

Bibliographical control in South Africa

This work is an annotated bibliography that consists of articles, books, conference papers, dissertations, and reports, etc. published in various library and information science forums on the subject of librarianship in Islamic East Africa. The goal of preparing this work is to provide a list of citations with abstracts that librarians, library students, and library scholars can use to perform research within this subject area and further the body of knowledge. The research methodology that was used to find these citations involved searching the database versions of ERIC, Dissertations Abstracts Online, and Library Literature within the online public access catalog of the Auburn University library system. It also involved searching the online databases of Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), British Education Index, and Education Abstracts within the DIALOG database as well as the respective print copies of these resources. While this work is by no means an exhaustive analysis of the entire East African library literature, it does strive to be comprehensive in terms of its country-by-country breakdown of librarianship within the region. Islamic East Africa for the purposes of this work incorporates the nations of Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and Tanzania. In providing a citation for a non-English language work, the English equivalent of the title of that work will be given next to the non-English title.     

Librarianship and Information Science in the Maghreb 1966–1999: An Annotated Bibliography

This work is an annotated bibliography that consists of articles, books, conference papers, dissertations, reports, etc. published in various library and information science forums on the subject of librarianship in the Maghreb. The goal of preparing this work is to provide a list of citations with abstracts that librarians, library students, and library scholars can use to perform research within this subject area and further the body of knowledge. The research methodology that was used to find these citations involved searching the database versions of ERIC, Dissertations Abstracts Online, and Library Literature within the online public access catalog of the Auburn University library system. It also involved searching the online databases of Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), British Education Index, andEducation Abstracts within the DIALOG database as well as the respective print versions of these resources. While this work is by no means an exhaustive critique of the entire Maghrebi library and information science literature, it does strive to be comprehensive in terms of its country-by-country analysis of librarianship and information science within the region. In providing a citation for a non-English language work, the English equivalent of the title of that work will be given next to the non-English title.     

Information Retrieval in Psychology:

Information retrieval is an important but generally neglected part of the research method in psychology. On the basis of a case study, which consists of an examination of the search strategy in a Swedish dissertation, the problems of searching are overviewed, with regard to both the selection of sources, and the construction of the search profile. Attention is given to subject faceting in psychology. A model used by Psychological Abstracts in building on the concepts of experimental variables is replaced by a facet model developed on the basis of the Bliss Classification System. This model is illustrated using the above-mentioned dissertation as an example, and it is shown that the model can help in formulating search questions in psychology. Also discusses are problems that concern the use of abstracts or full texts in the selection of documents. In addition, attention is given to the question of types of research in psychology that can benefit from computer-based retrieval methods.     

Comparing alternatives to the Web of Science for coverage of the social sciences’ literature

The Web of Science is no longer the only database which offers citation indexing of the social sciences. Scopus, CSA Illumina and Google Scholar are new entrants in this market. The holdings and citation records of these four databases were assessed against two sets of data one drawn from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and the other from the International bibliography of the Social Sciences. Initially, CSA Illumina's coverage at journal title level appeared to be the most comprehensive. But when recall and average citation count was tested at article level and rankings extrapolated by submission frequency to individual journal titles, Scopus was ranked first. When issues of functionality, the quality of record processing and depth of coverage are taken into account, Scopus and Web of Science have a significant advantage over the other two databases. From this analysis, Scopus offers the best coverage from amongst these databases and could be used as an alternative to the Web of Science as a tool to evaluate the research impact in the social sciences.     

Personnel Management Indexes

Literature pertinent to personnel and human resources management appears in a wide range of publications and can be accessed through a diversity of indexing sources. This article, however, concentrates on four specialized indexes which are devoted exclusively to personnel and human resources topics: Personnel Literature, Personnel Management Abstracts, Human Resource Abstracts, and Work Related Abstracts.     

Finding Citations to Social Work Literature: The Relative Benefits of Using Web of Science,Scopus, or Google Scholar

Past studies of citation coverage of Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar do not demonstrate a consistent pattern that can be applied to the interdisciplinary mix of resources used in social work research. To determine the utility of these tools to social work researchers, an analysis of citing references to well-known social work journals was conducted. Web of Science had the fewest citing references and almost no variety in source format. Scopus provided higher citation counts, but the pattern of coverage was similar to Web of Science. Google Scholar provided substantially more citing references, but only a relatively small percentage of them were unique scholarly journal articles.The patterns of database coverage were replicated when the citations were broken out for each journal separately. The results of this analysis demonstrate the need to determine what resources constitute scholarly research and reflect the need for future researchers to consider the merits of each database before undertaking their research. This study will be of interest to scholars in library and information science as well as social work, as it facilitates a greater understanding of the strengths and limitations of each database and brings to light important considerations for conducting future research.     

Documenting the world’s sociological literature:Sociological abstracts

Since its founding in 1953,Sociological Abstracts has abstracted and indexed the worldwide literature of sociology and the related social sciences. Growth and specialization within the field are reflected in the number of publications screened, the addition of new document types, the range of languages covered, and the increased specificity of indexing and classication.     

Journals in the Core Collection

ABSTRACT

This overview of the core concept applied to journals defines the relevant terminology and cites specific examples of core lists. Ten approaches for determining core journals (subjective judgment, use, indexing coverage, overlapping library holdings, citation data, citation network/co-citation analysis, production of articles, Bradford's Law, faculty publication data, and multiple criteria methods) are reviewed and the practical applications of core journals lists are explained. Theoretical and practical problems associated with the core concept and core journal lists are discussed and a taxonomy for classifying core journal lists is outlined.     

EBSCO's Communication & Mass Media Complete: An Appreciable Improvement Over Previous Communication Studies Indexing?

ABSTRACT

In a prior edition of this study, we examined whether the established online communication studies indexes—Communication Abstracts, ComIndex, and ComAbstracts—provided a good avenue of access to the journal literature that researchers in the field cite and whether, where the current journal literature was concerned, that avenue of access might be equal or superior to that provided by large, multisubject online indexes. In this iteration of the study, we similarly address EBSCO's new product for communication studies, Communication & Mass Media Complete.