NORTHWESTERN SCHOLARS

All disciplines, especially Medical and some other Sciences

Northwestern Scholars FAQ

Microsoft Academic Search has some similar relational graphing of researchers, citations, organizations, etc. If an NU (or other) scholar's data is incomplete or out of date, this can be a supplement--especially for humanities and social sciences coverage.

Automatically retrieves and aggregates publication data from the Elsevier SCOPUS database. It produces a visual indication or "Fingerprint" of data and concepts and provides citation counts for faculty whose publications appear in Scopus. At NU, this product is known as Northwestern Scholars; at other institutions, it has other names but mostly goes by Scholars' Profiles.

There are 2 types of lists of works. This is significant in terms of the limitations bulleted below:

1. "Scopus Publications" lists all publications by this author that appear in the Scopus database. It includes books, book chapters, working papers, articles, etc., mixed together and it is not always clear what is what.
2. The other lists, e.g., "Journal Publications" and "Book Chapters", contain citations provided by the author.

• Only publications that appear in the Scopus database, a science index, are included in the analytics and metrics.  
• Does not completely cover scholarship in books, performance, or any other non-serial formats. This is true of many indexes, but worth emphasizing in the case of NS because while all faculty names appear in NS some of their scholarship may not.
• Unless entered manually, the data for works not in the Scopus database will be incomplete or out of date.
  
• The publications list includes books, book chapters, working papers, articles, etc., mixed together and it is not always clear what is what.
• Although parts of NS might seem to indicate otherwise (“All of the publications associated with this researcher have been analyzed to create one fingerprint that represents the collective expertise and experience of the researcher“), data that is added by authors, as opposed to added by Scopus, are not included in analyses and metrics. There are no fields in the "Add Journal Article" form for citations, affiliations of other authors, and other data necessary to run the analyses.