INDEXING
DATABASES
Presented by
Diyashree Karmakar, Sukanya Borthakur & Sukanya
Dutta
Introduction to Indexing Databases & Importance in Research Ethics
What are indexing databases?
Major Indexing Databases
• Indexing databases are curated collections that catalog academic
journals and research articles based on criteria like quality, impact,
and scope. They serve as gateways to reliable, peer-reviewed
research, helping scholars locate credible sources quickly.
• Examples include Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, IEEE Xplore,
DOAJ, Google Scholar etc.
Purpose of indexing:
• Including journals in established databases enhances research Key factors considered by indexing
visibility, accessibility, and global reach. Indexed research becomes databases for selecting journals
easier for others to locate, read, and cite, thereby increasing its
Peer review quality
impact within the academic community.
Editorial Standards
Publication Ethics
Ethical importance in research: Scientific Quality & Contribution
• Credibility & Integrity Consistency & Diversity
• Quality Assurance Accessibility
• Research Ethics
Major Indexing Databases
Scopus : A Leading Indexing Database
• Scopus is one of the largest abstract and citation databases of peer-reviewed literature,
covering a wide range of disciplines including sciences, technology, medicine, social
sciences, and arts and humanities. It is owned by Elsevier.
• Disciplines: Scopus covers 240 disciplines and is considered to have the broadest Key Features :
coverage of any database. Citation Tracking : Allows
• Content sources: Scopus content comes from over 7,000 publishers in 105 countries. researchers to track citations
• Document types: and analyze how their work
• Source types include journals, conferences, books and book series. Document types is cited across various fields,
include articles, conference papers, reviews, book chapters, short surveys, books, data aiding in impact assessment.
Quality Control: Only journals
papers and reports.
that meet rigorous selection
• Conference papers: Over 10% of the Scopus database is made up of conference
criteria are included,
papers, primarily in engineering, computer science, and some areas of physics. ensuring that publications
• Content selection: An independent Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) maintain ethical and quality
reviews and selects the content to be indexed on Scopus. The CSAB evaluates content standards.
based on factors such as the publisher's reputation, the size and subject area of the Metrics and Analytics:
book list, and the quality of the published content. Provides tools like
• Number of records: Scopus has over 90 million records, including 27,950 active CiteScore, h-index, and
peer-reviewed journals, 2.48 million book titles, and 20.54 million open access SJR offering insights into
journal impact and
articles.
researcher productivity.
• New content: Approximately 3 million new items are added to the database each
year.
Web of Science:
Web of Science (WoS) is the world’s oldest, most widely used and authoritative
database of research publications and citations.
It was introduced commercially by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
in 1997, initially as an information retrieval tool called the Science Citation Index (SCI). It is currently owned by Clarivate.
The coverage of WoS has expanded vastly since its inception , growing to about 34,000 journals today.
Disciplines: Science, social science, arts, humanities.
Coverage: Articles, reviews, editorials, chronologies, abstracts, proceedings, technical papers. As of February 2017, the
multidisciplinary coverage of the Web of Science encompasses over 12 thousand high impact journals, and 8.2 million
records across 160 thousand conference proceedings, with 15 thousand proceedings added each year.
Core collection:
The Web of Science Core Collection consists of six online indexing databases:
Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE): It covers more than 9,200 journals across 178 scientific disciplines.
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI): It covers more than 3,400 journals in the social sciences.
Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI): It covers more than 1,800 journals in the arts and humanities
Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI): It covers more than 7,800 journals in all disciplines.
• Book Citation Index (BCI): It covers more than 116,000 editorially selected books.
• Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI): It covers more than 205,000 conference proceedings.
PubMed:
• PubMed is a freely accessible online database supporting the search and retrieval of
biomedical and life sciences literature.
• Available to the public online since 1996, PubMed was developed and is maintained by the National Center for
Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National
Institutes of Health (NIH).
• The PubMed database contains more than 37 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not
include full text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources,
such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).
Content:
PubMed’s comprehensive database encompasses citations from biomedicine, health and affiliated disciplines,
including: life sciences, behavioural sciences, chemical sciences and bioengineering.
Components of PubMed:
MEDLINE: MEDLINE is the largest component of PubMed and comprises carefully selected journal citations. The
articles are indexed with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and curated with other data such as genetic and chemical
data.
PubMed Central (PMC)
The PMC archive contains more than 10 million full-text article records spanning several centuries of biomedical and
life science research (late 1700s to present). This content includes articles that have been formally published in a
scholarly journal, author manuscripts that have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in a journal, and
preprint versions of articles that have been made public prior to peer review.
Bookshelf
Bookshelf is a full text archive of books, reports, databases, and other documents related to biomedical, health, and life
sciences.
IEEE Xplore:
IEEE Xplore is a subscription-based comprehensive digital library and research database that
provides access to journal articles, conference proceedings and related materials on computer
science, electrical engineering and electronics, and allied fields. It contains material published
Mainly by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and other partner publishers.
It was produced by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Institution of
Engineering and Technology in May 2000.
Disciplines: Computer science, electrical engineering and electronics.
Content: Its documents and other materials comprise more than 300 peer-reviewed journals, more than 1,900
global conferences, more than 11,000 technical standards, almost 5,000 e-books, and over 500 online courses.
Approximately 20,000 new documents are added each month to this database.
Google Scholar:
Freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly
literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.
Document types - Google Scholar includes scholarly articles from a wide variety of sources
in all fields of research, all languages, all countries, and over all time periods.
Contents- The content hosted on website must consist primarily of scholarly articles - journal
papers, conference papers, technical reports, or their drafts, dissertations, pre-prints, post-
prints, or abstracts. Content such as news or magazine articles, book reviews, and editorials is
not appropriate for Google Scholar. Documents larger than 5MB, such as books and long
Google Scholar home page
dissertations, should be uploaded to Google Book Search; Google Scholar automatically
includes scholarly works from Google Book Search. Type of site Bibliographic data
base
Content selection - To be included, website must make either the full text of the articles or Owner Google
their complete author-written abstracts freely available and easy to see when users click on URL [Link]
URLs in Google search results. Website must not require users (or search robots) to sign in, Registration Optional
install special software, accept disclaimers, dismiss popup or interstitial advertisements, click Launched November 20,
on links or buttons, or scroll down the page before they can read the entire abstract of the 2004; 19 years
ago
paper. Sites that show login pages, error pages, or bare bibliographic data without abstracts
will not be considered for inclusion and may be removed from Google Scholar. Current status Active
Number of records - It is estimated to contain more than 160 million documents and
continues to cover approximately 90% of all articles published in English.
[Link]
[Link]
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of
open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA).
Available in English
DOAJ is independent of the publishing industry, unlike Scopus or Web of Science. URL [Link]
Document types- The mission of DOAJ is to "increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage Commercial No
and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of Launched 2003
discipline, geography or language.
Current status Online
Content selection- DOAJ is solely for open access journals. DOAJ has specific inclusion criteria
that journals must meet to be considered for inclusion in the directory. These criteria cover various
aspects, including the peer-review process, the openness of access, editorial quality, and ethical
publishing practices.
Number of record- The number of journals included in DOAJ has continued to grow, to reach
14,299 as of 3 March 2020. As of December 2022, the independent database contains more than
18,650 open access journals and 8,265,272 articles covering all areas of science, technology,
medicine, social sciences and the humanities
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
OTHER INDEXING DATABASES
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory: Ulrich’s is a leading library directory and database with information about academic journals and serial
publications around the world that is part of Clarivate. Ulrich’s is a subscription-access index.
EBSCO Information Services: EBSCO is a commercial index and aggregator that includes titles compiled by the company and journals
from other databases, such as MEDLINE. EBSCO is a subscription-access index.
JSTOR: JSTOR is a digital library database that covers over 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75
disciplines. They are best known for hosting digitized content from journal back files, books, and other resources. They now publish
journals willing to host articles solely on the JSTOR platform.
SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online): SciELO is a bibliographic database, digital library, and cooperative electronic publishing
model for OA journals created to support the publication and increase the visibility of OA research in developing countries. SciELO is a
free-access index.
Cabell’s: This last one is a little different. Rather than being an index readers use to find content, Cabell’s is a directory researchers use to
determine which journals will be the best fit to publish in. Of course, attracting more high-quality submissions can also help journals expand
their impact and reach, so it’s a good idea to pursue Cabell’s indexing. Cabell’s is a subscription-access index.
Similarly, there are other discipline specific indexes, like ERIC for teaching and education journals. Another example is Philindex, which is
for philosophy and anthropology journals, PsycInfo (Psychological Association’s abstracting and indexing database); MathSciNet
(American Mathematical Society’s searchable online bibliographic database); Project MUSE (humanities and social sciences content); etc…
CONCLUSION
Indexing databases are integral to the academic ecosystem.
They ensure the proper dissemination of research, uphold
publication standards, and provide tools to evaluate the impact and
quality of scholarly work.
Researchers, institutions, and publishers alike benefit from the
credibility and exposure offered by indexing databases.
Thank You