Lietuvos mokslo periodikos asociacija
The Association of Lithuanian Serials

Scopus data are used for the assessment of universities and other academic institutions. The access to this database is restricted and the subscription rate is really big, however, SCImago Journal & Country Rank website (http://www.scimagojr.com/) has an open access. This website includes research journal indicators which are well-known for researchers (SJR, h index, number of publications, average citation rate, etc.).

The chief advantage of this website is that it is free of charge, informative and easy to use. You can easily and quickly find data about any journal presented by any country or Scopus database. Not only could journals but also countries or regions be compared. Before submitting their manuscript to any journal, foreign authors usually check research journal indicators.

The biggest disadvantage of Scopus is that it is difficult to correct mistaken or outdated data about the journal, e.g. journals happen to be attributed to wrong research areas in Scopus database (see column 5 of the table attached), publisher happens to be indicated incorrectly (see column 6 of the table attached).  The majority of the Lithuanian journals send their print copies to the database, therefore, it could be assumed that even more data are given incorrectly and are delayed. The best practice would be if Scopus could scan the necessary data from the publisher’s platform, the worst scenario would be if the publisher had to send not only PDF to Scopus but also XML files which is the best way to avoid mistakes.

Drawbacks of Scopus did not affect the indicators of Lithuania negatively since the majority of the Lithuanian researchers’ publications, which are included in Scopus database, are published in foreign research journals which generally have advanced electronic publishing and their content is scanned by Scopus from their platforms automatically.

The accuracy of data from SCImago Journal & Country Rank website and Scopus database could be questioned, however, the question arises: how could a constantly increasing popularity of this website in the world be explained? Should we ignore what is well acknowledged in the world? It would be wise to get acquainted with how Lithuania is seen by foreigners.

SCImago Journal & Country Rank indicators [ PDF ]