South America's research impact is underestimated in the main citation databases, as you suggest (Nature 510, 202–203; 2014). However, incorporating the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) Index into Thomson Reuter's Science Citation Index will not rectify the situation.
SciELO captures only a fraction of the continent's peer-reviewed publications. For example, it indexes papers from just 267 of Brazil's 1,909 journals. Coverage by Elsevier's Scopus database is also inadequate.
According to Latin America's most comprehensive database on scholarly journals, the Latindex Catalog, 4,882 journals in South America meet specified editorial criteria (see go.nature.com/lbrng2). Scopus includes only 726 of these journals (15%); regional journals are not eligible (see also go.nature.com/laywal).
That leaves 4,156 journals whose impact is hidden from Scopus. If we assume conservatively that each of these publishes only 20 articles per year by South American authors, then at least 83,120 articles are being overlooked annually.
The commercial databases should close this coverage gap to properly reflect the impact of research in South America.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Alperin, J. Citation databases omit local journals. Nature 511, 155 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/511155c
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/511155c
This article is cited by
-
Measuring the Cuban scientific output in scholarly journals through a comprehensive coverage approach
Scientometrics (2019)
-
Has hosting on science direct improved the visibility of Latin American scholarly journals? A preliminary analysis of data quality
Scientometrics (2018)
-
Can Twitter increase the visibility of Chinese publications?
Scientometrics (2018)
-
Change in the publishing regime in Latin America: from a local to universal journal, Archivos de investigación Médica/Archives of Medical Research (1970–2014)
Scientometrics (2017)