Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, and Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), today announced the establishment and opening of the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center.
Based in Beijing, the mission of the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center is to enhance China’s opportunities in bibliometric research. The research center will focus on identifying research topics of interest to both Elsevier and ISTIC, such as article level bibliometric analyses for measuring journal quality and research performance of individuals and institutions.
Dr. Defang He, Director-General of ISTIC, said, “In order to further promote the process of globalization, the cooperation between the development, dissemination and use of scientific and technological information is very important. With Elsevier’s full text resource, extensive databases and technical know-how, our research program and students will benefit from an expanded breadth of knowledge and resources.”
In following their mission, the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center will use Elsevier’s SciVal Spotlight, a web-based tool that enables countries and institutions to evaluate their research performance, measure their strengths against peers and establish and execute research strategies based on objective information, and Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. These Elsevier tools will help extract and integrate insights about China’s research performance and advance journal assessment research and article-based analytics. In addition, Scopus data will be included in the ISTIC annual university research performance report.
“Working with ISTIC and having Scopus data in the ISTIC annual university research performance report is a significant recognition of the value of SciVal Spotlight and Scopus to the scientific community in China,” said Elsevier’s senior scientific advisor, Professor Henk Moed, appointed to represent Elsevier as Co-director of the research center. “The establishment of this center represents a key development in Elsevier’s mission to establish global data metric standards for scientific research, and recognition of China’s growth and increasing influence in academic research.”
In addition to the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center, Elsevier and ISTIC will also establish an Expert Content Selection and Advisory Committee of China (ECSAC-China). The ECSAC-China board members will work closely with Elsevier to evaluate and select Chinese Journals to be submitted for evaluation by the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB), the independent group that approves titles for Scopus indexing.
“We believe that the formation of ECSAC-China will play a crucial role in helping to establish processes and programs that will raise the standards and international visibility of Chinese journals,” said Olivier Dumon, Managing Director A&G Research Markets at Elsevier. “Our collaboration with ISTIC and the creation of ECSAC-China serve to further our mission of supporting the global research community.”
