STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that its flagship product, Scopus, has been chosen by the Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance (iFQ) to be used in the development of its new German Competence Centre for Bibliometrics. Scopus is projected as the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.
The iFQ is a scientific institute that was created by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) to focus on assessing Germany's funding programs, and analysing their global impact. The Competence Centre, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF), aims to set up a bibliometric database and develop checked bibliometric methods and indicators that meet today's requirements in reliability and validity. Scopus data and other bibliographic datasets will be used to quantify German research output and evaluate the impact it is having on the global scientific landscape. This insight will allow for a better understanding of how local researchers, institutions and funding agencies perform in areas key to German science policy and will ultimately be used to identify excellence and weakness within the German research system.
Covering the world's research literature, Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality Web sources with smart tools to track analyse and visualise research. Its unique database contains abstracts and references from over 15,000 peer-reviewed journals from 4,000 publishers worldwide, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage. In addition, Scopus not only offers users citation information about the articles covered, but also directly integrates web and patent searches. Direct links to full-text articles, library resources and other applications like reference management software, make Scopus quicker, easier and more comprehensive to use.
