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Use of Scopus and Google Scholar to measure social sciences production in four major Spanish universities

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Abstract

A large part of Social Sciences and the Humanities do not adapt to international proceedings used in English for scientific output on databases such as the Web of Science and Scopus. The aim of this paper is to show the different results obtained in scientific work by comparing Social Sciences researchers with those of other sciences in four Spanish universities. The first finding is that some Social Sciences researchers are somewhat internationalised. However, the majority of individuals who are prestigious in their local academic-scientific community do not even appear on the information sources mentioned above.

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Acknowledgements

Well-chosen comments on an earlier draft from two anonymous referees are gratefully appreciated. We are most grateful to Carmen Acebal, Research Vice-Rector of the Universidad Complutense, and to Manu Barandiaran, Iñaki Lasagabaster, Jon Barrutia, Pedro Ibarra, Juan Carlos Miguel, Alex Arizkun and Jon Arluzea, professors and researchers, for helpful information on the academic and research practices in different scientific areas and disciplines. The authors would particularly wish to thank Carmen Pérez (CSIC) and Nekane Zaldua (UPV/EHU) for their assistance with data collection. Lastly, we would like to give special thanks to our translator, Patricia O’Connor, for her excellent work translating, revising and correcting this article and previous ones.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain

    Goio Etxebarria & Mikel Gomez-Uranga

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  1. Goio Etxebarria
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  2. Mikel Gomez-Uranga
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Correspondence to Goio Etxebarria.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7.

Table 6 No. of teaching and research staff classified by universities. 2004
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Table 7 No. of teaching and research staff classified by state universities and teaching fields (2004)
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Etxebarria, G., Gomez-Uranga, M. Use of Scopus and Google Scholar to measure social sciences production in four major Spanish universities. Scientometrics 82, 333–349 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0043-9

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