Self-evaluation: A method for the assessment of scientific output

Abstract

We asked social science researchers to state their top 3 publications. 2,331 academics who work in 42 countries responded to the survey. The respondents’ Google Scholar and Scopus profiles, and their biographical information are also collected. Preliminary results show that 17% of the top 3 publications are not indexed in Scopus. The ratio of the top 3 publications that are not indexed in Scopus is 74% for books and 83% for non-English publications. The best publications have more citations than the second and third-best publications in Scopus, but the same result cannot be attained when Google Scholar citations are used. This is still a project in progress. When the project is completed, we aim to fully analyze the self-evaluations by the bibliometric data and incorporate this information to improve the assessment of scientific output.