Rick Anderson writes;
There's no need to sit idly by and be suspicious -- check out Scopus'
results and see what you think.  Better yet, do a rigorous study and
publish it.  The resulting article would be interesting and useful.

 To this statement I say amen.  I really wish that  there could be a
little more rigor brought to the many accusations being floated about
newer e-resouces such as Scopus and Google Scholar.  There is going to
be another session at the European ICOLC meeting taking place in Poznan,
Poland at the end of September where  speakers will compare and contrast
Google Scholar, Scopus and  Web Of Science. While  I have no problem
with this, I did suggest that I would prefer to hear from a researcher
who  either has or would be prepared to actually use  the e-resouces for
some research and then report on their results. We will see what happens.

     It was this sort of  " rigorous study " that Scopus did at my
university. The University of Toronto Library ( presently, the 3rd
ranked ARL) was a development partner with Scopus for the last - give or
take - 3 years. This initiative was new to us  but we were very
interested in their User Centred Design approach. We really liked the
idea of going to the faculty, staff and students of the university to
find out what they thought, after all, that is why we are here. To serve
the information wants and needs of those same individuals.It was a lot
of work but we believe worth it in the end. The Scopus folk kept coming
over either in person or virtually to talk to end-users that we helped
identify. They spoke to young researchers just getting started up to
senior faculty with more than a million in research funding. They spoke
with masters students through PhDs in all disciplines ( with a tendency
to more in the sciences ). They spoke and had focus groups with general
librarians and  subject specialist librarians.
       They started with no pre-conceived agenda but simply went to
where the researchers did their work and watched them. They asked some
questions and then went away and came back with what they thought they
heard to get their findings validated. Obviously I am not the expert on
this process and I am not in any way attempting to present every step
but I thought it might be useful for some of you who may have no idea
what went  on " behind the scenes ". This whole process continues to
this day. Follow up phone calls and on-site interviews Webcasts and
e-mails etc.
          So I think you can imagine some of my wonderment when I see
some of the listserv postings and hear some librarians' comments
concerning Scopus and the fact that it is an Elsevier product and de
facto can have no validity.. Unless you are saying that Elsevier was
able to hoodwink all of our researchers plus the researchers at the
other ??? development partners throughout the world, then I wish they
would be more judicious in their choice of comments or better still take
Rick up on his suggestion.

               Take care,

                Warren

--
Warren Holder
Electronic Resources Co-ordinator

University of Toronto Libraries
130 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario CANADA M5S 1A5

Tel: 416 978 2286  Fax: 416 978 1668
warren.holder@utoronto.ca

www.library.utoronto.ca/its/warren.html