Research evaluation and bibliometrics
Stockholm University annually analyses its scientific activities in various ways, including studying publication statistics. This is called bibliometrics.
What is bibliometrics?
The term bibliometrics describes the quantitative study of scientific publications. Based on what researchers publish, knowledge production and utilization in higher education are examined.
The application of bibliometrics varies between subject areas with different traditions for publishing and citation. Depending on the subject area, different measurement methods and data sources are used.
Bibliometrics at Stockholm University
The publication frequency for the entire university is included in the university's annual report. Sometimes, the citation rate per article is also measured. Analyses of, for example, institutional publication activity, the impact of publications, or co-publication (across subject, institutional, or university boundaries) can be conducted as needed and upon request.
The Humanities and Social Sciences faculties conduct annual evaluations of publications using a self-developed scoring system. This is done to compare researchers' publication activities between institutions and subject areas. These analyses partly influence the faculties' allocation of funds.
It is important that you are thorough and register all your publications in DiVA to contribute to accurate analyses and to promote the credibility of research.
Learn more about accessible and credible publishing.
Data Sources for Bibliometrics
Bibliometric analyses may involve various measurement methods and data sources. Publication data is recorded in several databases both nationally and internationally. At Stockholm University, the databases DiVA, Norway's register of scientific publication channels, Web of Science, and Scopus are used for these analyses. All users at Stockholm University have access to these databases if they are logged in through the library's website.
DiVA
Stockholm University annually analyses its scientific activities through the publications registered in DiVA - Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet (a digital publishing system). It is used for electronic registration, publication, and archiving of publications from 47 universities and research institutions. Publications registered in DiVA are automatically transferred to the national database SwePub, which contains scientific publications from Swedish universities.
Publications in journals and series indexed in Web of Science or Scopus are imported automatically. Other publications must be registered manually.
Each department has a person responsible for administration in DiVA. Please contact them first if you have any questions. The library also has a working group responsible for coordination and data control in DiVA.
Register your publications in DiVA
Learn more about accessible and credible publishing.
Search in Stockholm universitety's DiVA
Norwegian Database for Higher Education Statistics
In Norway, there is a database containing a list of publication channels. The channels are sorted into different levels of scientific quality. This database is sometimes called the "Norwegian list" and is used to ensure that researchers' writings are published according to good scientific practice.
The list contains approved publication channels for journals, book series, and publishers. These channels are graded on a scale from 0 to 2:
- Level 0 indicates that the channel has national dissemination and no scientific review process.
- Level 1 indicates that it is a channel with a scientific review process and an international readership.
- Level 2 indicates that the channel is of internationally high quality in terms of reviewing published articles and books, and the selection represents the top 20 percent of the total number of channels.
The ranking is done annually, and the list is evaluated by Norwegian scientific experts in respective subject areas. Researchers can nominate new publication channels for review, and the criteria for inclusion are openly available.
"The Norwegian list" - Register of Scientific Publication Channels
Criteria for inclusion in "the Norwegian list"
Web of Science
The most commonly used database for citation measurement is Web of Science, which is where the annual measurement of the "Journal Impact Factor" comes from.
Web of Science is a database of published articles, and to some extent, also book titles included in series. It is now owned by the analytics company Clarivate.
The database consists of several parts, but the most common ones are the "Science Citation Index" and the "Social Science Citation Index." The material indexed is quality-assured through an application process with stringent requirements for peer-reviewed publications and correct digital representation.
Both of these indexes are used to create the annual statistics from Journal Citation Reports, which in turn generates the Journal Impact Factor. This Impact Factor is a measure showing the average number of citations per article during a calendar year and includes articles published in the respective journal over the two annual volumes released in the years before the citation year.
There is also an "Arts & Humanities Citation Index," but no citation statistics report is generated, and journals are not ranked by Impact Factor.
Web of Science
The annual measurement of Journal Impact Factor
SCOPUS
The citation database SCOPUS is owned by the publisher Elsevier. It was created as an alternative to Web of Science to provide more analysis opportunities and to include more journals and book series than those covered by the competitor.
SCOPUS analyses the number of citations per article or journal, but it measures with different metrics and includes more data sources. There is also a service called "SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR)" that compares different publication channels.
SCOPUS has a freely accessible website where you can compare publication channels based on various bibliometric measures.
SCOPUS
SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR)