Disciplines Social sciences | ||
Producer Thomson Reuters (United States) Record depth Index & citation indexing | ||
The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a commercial citation index product of Thomson Reuters' Healthcare & Science division. It was developed by the Institute for Scientific Information from the Science Citation Index.
Contents
Overview
The SSCI citation database covers some 3,000 of the world's leading academic journals in the social sciences across more than 50 disciplines. It is made available online through the Web of Science service for a fee. The database records which articles are cited by other articles.
Criticism
Philip Altbach has criticised the Social Sciences Citation Index of favouring English-language journals generally and American journals specifically, while greatly underrepresenting journals in non-English languages.
In 2004, economists Daniel B. Klein and Eric Chiang conducted a survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index and identified a bias against free market oriented research. In addition to an ideological bias, Klein and Chiang also identified several methodological deficiencies that encouraged the over-counting of citations, and they argue that the Social Sciences Citation Index does a poor job reflecting the relevance and accuracy of articles.