Briefs

Database offers on-the-fly results.

Declan Butler, Nature, Jan 2, 2008.

A new Internet database lets users generate on-the-fly citation statistics of published research papers for free. The tool also calculates papers' impact factors using a new algorithm similar to PageRank, the algorithm Google uses to rank web pages. The open-access database is collaborating with Elsevier, the giant Amsterdam-based science publisher, and its underlying data come from Scopus, a subscription abstracts database created by Elsevier in 2004.

The SCImago Journal & Country Rank database was launched in December by SCImago, a data-mining and visualization group at the universities of Granada, Extremadura, Carlos III and Alcal� de Henares, all in Spain. It ranks journals and countries using such citation metrics as the popular, if controversial, Hirsch Index. It also includes a new metric: the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR).

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