Scopus’ friendly seaching interface
July 10, 2008
If you have not yet had a chance to play with the Scopus interface, its well worth a look. Through their extensive research, Scopus has made the use of facets approacable and intuitive. Just like in Erik Hatcher’s Collex platform, users can choose to either limit or exclude multiple facets within specific categories in their searches.
I’m glad that the Scopus folks made it down to demo the service as I had a chance to ask them some questions about their content. I’m always thinking about how to promote and include the journals that we’re hosting at York through Open Journal Systems software, and so I asked one of the three Scopus representatives about the process involved. It turns out the there is an on-line form through which one can suggest a title. Applications are reviewed once per year. This year’s deadline is September 1st, 2008. It was disappointing to hear that the rejection rate is 65% because being accessible through this interface would enable Scopus users to more deliberately discover a journal’s content.
Another huge benefit to journals indexed by Scopus is the Journal Analyzer function. This tool allows a journal to track its citations back to 1996. The Journal Analyzer also allows users to select up to 10 journals and compare their performance next to each other on the same graph. This could be a useful visual accompaniment to a grant application.
