Peer review has been in place for centuries as an accepted process to validate manuscripts submitted for publication in scientific journals. Yet a similarly rigorous assessment of content also happens a level up, when looking at the quality of journals that apply for indexing in bibliographic databases. Scopus, an abstract & citation database provided by Elsevier, indexing 18,000 scientific titles, is receiving an increasing number of title suggestions; in 2009 this grew to almost 5,000 in that year alone. Some of the suggested journals are dedicated to niche areas and/or are published in other languages than English. To ensure a fair and transparent evaluation of these titles and to address the rising interest in being indexed, Scopus redesigned its entire title evaluation process – basing it on a metrical scorecard and on the principles of peer review. By developing an online editorial system – the Scopus Title Evaluation Platform (STEP) – Scopus also created the prerequisite of an improved communication with publishers and editors about their journals.
This poster reports on the preliminary findings of a study that examines data curation work in institutional repositories (IR). The study identified three perceived roles played by IR staff (i.e., data curator, IR manager, and metadata specialist) and role-specific sets of activities and skills. The findings of this study can inform the development of best practices and effective infrastructure support for data curation in the context of IRs, as well as teaching data curation in LIS schools.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.