Policy Development and the SCOPUS Citation System: part 2: the work of the Content Selection Advisory Board 2012 - 2016
Policy Development and the SCOPUS Citation System: part 2: the work of the Content Selection Advisory Board 2012 - 2016
The information which is generated by the principal global bibliometric and citation systems, Web of Science and SCOPUS, plays a major role in shaping academic behaviours and institutional strategies. The selection of academic source material, primarily journals, for bibliometric analysis is a key element in the quality assurance to which each system aspires.
As the Subject Chair for Medicine for the SCOPUS Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) since 2009, I have been deeply invested professionally in the generation and implementation of the policies which underwrite these quality assurance processes.
I have also become very interested in the technologies and conceptual frameworks which have developed the SCOPUS digital information system through a period of dramatic change in academic publishing. I have witnessed the move from paper to digital systems; the collapse in costs of digital publishing; the global surge in publishers and journals; the shift from subscription-based to “Article Processing Charge” based funding; and the explosion in the scale and complexity of publication fraud.
In the previous essays in this series on the Adjudication of Quality in the Global Academic Literature, I described the early development of the policies which govern the design and operation of the SCOPUS Title Evaluation Platform (STEP) through 2010-2011, with particular reference to the academic journal evaluation process.
In this essay, I describe the further work of the CSAB from 2012 to 2016, with a particular emphasis on policy development for SCOPUS and in respect of Title Selection in the dynamic environment of change across the academic publishing ecosystem.
This period saw the rise to prominence of the work of Jeffrey Beall in highlighting the prevalence and complexity of predatory publishing; the introduction of the Elsevier Citescore metric and the diversification of bibliometric measures; rapid growth of journal applications for a SCOPUS listing; and the early development of the SCOPUS re-evaluation programme.
SCOPUS, Content Selection Advisory Board, Bibliometrics: Publishing Ethics, Publication Malpractice, Policy Development, SCOPUS Title Evaluation Platform
University of Southampton
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
10 February 2026
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
Rew, David
(2026)
Policy Development and the SCOPUS Citation System: part 2: the work of the Content Selection Advisory Board 2012 - 2016
(Essays on the Adjudication of Quality in the Global Academic Literature)
University of Southampton
37pp.
Record type:
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Abstract
The information which is generated by the principal global bibliometric and citation systems, Web of Science and SCOPUS, plays a major role in shaping academic behaviours and institutional strategies. The selection of academic source material, primarily journals, for bibliometric analysis is a key element in the quality assurance to which each system aspires.
As the Subject Chair for Medicine for the SCOPUS Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) since 2009, I have been deeply invested professionally in the generation and implementation of the policies which underwrite these quality assurance processes.
I have also become very interested in the technologies and conceptual frameworks which have developed the SCOPUS digital information system through a period of dramatic change in academic publishing. I have witnessed the move from paper to digital systems; the collapse in costs of digital publishing; the global surge in publishers and journals; the shift from subscription-based to “Article Processing Charge” based funding; and the explosion in the scale and complexity of publication fraud.
In the previous essays in this series on the Adjudication of Quality in the Global Academic Literature, I described the early development of the policies which govern the design and operation of the SCOPUS Title Evaluation Platform (STEP) through 2010-2011, with particular reference to the academic journal evaluation process.
In this essay, I describe the further work of the CSAB from 2012 to 2016, with a particular emphasis on policy development for SCOPUS and in respect of Title Selection in the dynamic environment of change across the academic publishing ecosystem.
This period saw the rise to prominence of the work of Jeffrey Beall in highlighting the prevalence and complexity of predatory publishing; the introduction of the Elsevier Citescore metric and the diversification of bibliometric measures; rapid growth of journal applications for a SCOPUS listing; and the early development of the SCOPUS re-evaluation programme.
Text
SCOPUS CSAB 2012-2016 10.02.2026
- Author's Original
More information
Published date: 10 February 2026
Additional Information:
David Rew, MA MB MChir (Cambridge) FRCS (London)
Honorary Consultant Surgeon to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, UK
And to the Clinical Informatics Research Unit.
Former Editor in Chief of the EJSO, The European Journal of Surgical Oncology, 2003-2009
Subject Chair for Medicine to the SCOPUS Content Selection Advisory Board, Elsevier BV,
The Netherlands, 2009 to the Present
Keywords:
SCOPUS, Content Selection Advisory Board, Bibliometrics: Publishing Ethics, Publication Malpractice, Policy Development, SCOPUS Title Evaluation Platform
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 509464
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/509464
PURE UUID: 8eb24bcd-28b1-4ccd-a65c-6b7e84015add
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Date deposited: 23 Feb 2026 18:04
Last modified: 24 Feb 2026 02:59
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