SCOPUS SCOPUM
I’ve just spent the best part of two hours completing a lengthy and very tedious online form in order to apply to have the Open Journal of Astrophysics listed on Scopus. I did try this before, back in September, but the Scopus website crashed when I tried to submit the application. I emailed their helpline and they said they’d get back to me, but they never did.
One of the annoying things about the proposal form is the duplication of information. Almost every page requires the applicant to enter the name and email of the Managing Editor (that’s me). They could just carry that information forward from one page to the next.
An even more annoying thing is that one has to upload ten recent articles published by the Journal. It won’t accept weblinks, which would be more efficient for an online journal like OJAp. So I had to download ten papers from arXiv just to upload them again. Then I discovered they have a maximum file size of 10MB, which rules out several of our recent papers.
(All this reminds me that the next book on my reading list is Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber…)
My personal feeling is that I couldn’t care less about getting listed by Scopus – which is run by racketeering publishing giant Elsevier as a gate-keeper for the academic publishing industry – but it seems that there are a lot of bean-counters around the world who think a journal isn’t a journal unless it is on their list, no doubt because Elsevier told them that is the case.
In fact it’s quite easy to look up citations, etc, for journals and individual articles without recourse to Scopus but administrators have been brainwashed into handing over large sums of money to Elsevier to inflate their already substantial profits. I don’t feel I should be asking for approval from the likes of them.
Anyway, the flakiness of their Scopus application platform – see paragraphs 1 to 3 above – does not fill me with confidence that Elsevier put much effort into the process. On the other hand, they have a captive audience so why should they? Now, however, at least I have an email confirming they received the application along with a tracking number and the statement
Please allow up to several months for the review process to be completed.
The only reason for posting this here is to remind me to post if and when they respond. I won’t be holding my breath.
In the Dark 
November 21, 2023 at 6:45 pm
Even worse, most colleges now insist researchers apply for funding using admin schemes such as PURE. These only include publications and citations in journals approved by Elsevier, thus forcing everybody back to the old publication model…
November 22, 2023 at 8:19 am
Yes, and it’s signficantly worse in poorer (research and otherwise) countries, where adminstrators are less aware of independent evaluative criteria and less trustful of the local academic community. There, “authorities” such as Scopus gain even more hollow weight.
November 22, 2023 at 9:11 am
If the organisation has signed up to DORA – like UKRI – then it should not matter if the journal is in Scopus or not, as the journal nor its IF can be used as a measure of the quality of a paper. Regarding citations I would normally advise astro people to use NASA ADS and to explicitly state in e.g. a job application that this is the standard citation source for astro papers.
November 22, 2023 at 9:51 am
Yes, but as I’ve said before many institutions have signed up to DORA but pay no attention to it in practice.
November 22, 2023 at 9:51 am
Bullshit Jobs is the one book by the (tragically late) David Graeber that I don’t own. Based on extended summaries, I’m not convinced that he got their origin right. But he was a wonderful thinker. I first became aware of him by listening to a series of radio talks he gave based on his book about the prehistory of money, Debt: the first 5000 years, which I instantly bought. It is brilliant. And his last book The Dawn of Everything about anthropology is extraordinary. It is packed with ideas, not all of which can be right – truth takes a long time to become clear in anthropology – but all of which are innovative and interesting.
November 22, 2023 at 9:53 am
I’ll get back to you when I’ve read the book; I haven’t started it yet. I have three lengthy train journeys coming up so I should have finished it by next week.
November 22, 2023 at 7:17 pm
Non-bean-counter question: is OJAp currently read by SIMBAD etc? If not, can the community help this happen?
BS Jobs is a great read, by the way. Lots of snark, but also some serious discussion.
January 6, 2024 at 12:26 pm
[…] November, therefore, I decided to hold my nose and apply for Scopus listing; I blogged about this here. The application process is rather time-consuming and I was told to expect the process to take […]
September 4, 2024 at 8:10 am
I can relate to your frustration with the Scopus journal application process. The redundancy and technical issues you faced are incredibly irritating, especially when dealing with an industry giant like Elsevier. It’s disheartening to see such inefficiencies from a system that holds so much sway over academic publishing. Best of luck with your application!