Elsevier Launches SciVal Spotlight Bibliometric Service

Elsevier's SciVal Spotlight uses "science mapping" to reveal the structure of scientific publishing in no fewer than 80,000 areas of research by means of bibliographic analysis and visualization algorithms. [Press Release] Think traditional bibliometric research measurements on steroids in so far as SciVal's strength lies in focusing on narrow subfields including hard to measure multidisciplinary research.

Elsevier's SciVal Spotlight doesn't come cheap. The price tag varies by institutional size but could range into six figures according to David Glenn in New Tool Compares Scholars' Research Strengths (Chronicle of Higher Education). Universities competing for research grants in the sciences may embrace the service if they feel that their distinctive strengths are overlooked in more traditional bibliographic ranking systems. Glenn adds

But while the product boasts a new methodology, it is unlikely to silence the familiar criticisms of bibliometric research measurements, including the fear that scholars will game the system by over-citing their friends' work and the complaint that journal citations cannot do justice to the humanities and other monograph-heavy fields.

Will Elsevier's new methodology make law journal citation counting passé someday? [JH]