Current Scientific Impact of Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia in the Scopus Database (1960-2014)

AIM: The aim of this study was to analyze current scientific impact of Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia in the Scopus Database (1960-2014). MATERIAL AND METHODS: Affiliation search of the Scopus database was performed on November 23, 2014 in order to identify published papers from the Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje (UC&M), Republic of Macedonia. A total number of 3960 articles (3055 articles from UC&M, 861 articles from Faculty of Medicine, UC&M, and 144 articles from Faculty of Pharmacy, UC&M) were selected for analysis (1960-2014). SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) and h-index were calculated from the Scopus database. RESULTS: The number of published papers was sharply increased with maximum of 379 papers in 2012 year. The largest number of papers has been published in Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, Journal of Molecular Structure, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Acta Pharmecutica, and Macedonian Journal of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. The biggest SJR and SNIP has journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation. First three places of the top ten authors belong to Dimirovski GM, Gavrilovska L, and Gusev M. Top three places based on Scopus h-index (total number of published papers) belong to Kocarev L, Stafilov T, and Polenakovic M. The majority of papers originate from UC&M, but significant numbers of papers are affiliated to Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Pharmacy, and Institute of Chemistry as members of UC&M, as well as Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Articles are the most dominant type of documents followed by conference papers, and review articles. Medicine is the most represented subject. CONCLUSION: Officials of the Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje should undertake more effective and proactive policies for journal publishers and their Editorial Boards in order to include more journals from UC&M in the Scopus database.


Introduction
Scopus is the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature with smart tools that track, analyze and visualize research. Easy to use and comprehensive, Scopus is designed to quickly find the information researchers' need. Scopus indexes over 20,500 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide; contains 49 million records, 78% with abstracts; includes over 5.3 million conference papers; and provides 100% Medline coverage [1]. Scopus includes a more expanded spectrum of journals than PubMed and Web of Science, and its citation analysis is faster and includes more articles than the citation analysis of Web of Science. On the other hand, the citation analysis that Web of Science presents provides better graphics and is more detailed than the citation analysis of Scopus, probably because Web of Science has been designed with the intention of satisfying users in citation analysis, a field discussed and debated by scientists for decades [2].
The three databases (WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar) represent different approaches to citation search services. WoS and Scopus are commercial databases (at the expensive end of the spectrumfor good reasons). Google Scholar is currently an open access database, still in beta version after its launch in November 2004. The expectations are different for fee-based and free databases, but open access should not provide excuse for ill-conceived and poorly implemented search options, and for convoluted, and potentially misleading presentation of information [3].
There are several rankings of the universities in the world which uses different data for analysis. Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is annual university rankings published by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy [4]. The publication now comprises world's overall and subject league tables, together with regional Greater China Ranking and Macedonian HEIs Ranking. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) compiled Macedonian HEIs Ranking, a ranking of Macedonian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) commissioned by Ministry of Education and Science of Republic of Macedonia. Nineteen qualified HEIs were included in the ranking. The ranking used 19 indicators of academic performance and competitiveness, covering major mission aspects of HEIs such as teaching, research and social service. It is the first university ranking in Macedonia [5].
Every year, SCImago Research Group publishes two reports on institutions, the Ibero-American SIR (SCImago Research Group) and the Global SIR. The Global SIR is published in July and it takes into account those organizations from any country, with at least 100 documents published in the last year of the five-year period. The chronological range extends from 2003 to 2013 and each report represents the five-year period with indicators [6]. At the moment there are five public universities and fifteen private universities, or in total twenty accredited universities in R. Macedonia [7]. The oldest Public University in the Republic of Macedonia is Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, established in 1949 year.
The aim of this study was to analyze current scientific impact of Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia in the Scopus Database (1960-2014). A total number of 3960 articles, all from Ss Cyril and Methodius University (3055 articles from Ss Cyril and Methodius University, 861 articles from Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Faculty of Medicine, and 144 articles from Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Faculty of Pharmacy), were selected for analysis . SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) and hindex were calculated from the Scopus database [8,9].

Results
The   The number of papers published by top ten authors is shown in Figure 3. First three places belong to Dimirovski GM, Gavrilovska L, and Gusev M with 121, 96, and 95 papers, respectively. Next seven places belongs to Soptrajanov B, Davcev D, Stafilov T, Polenakovic M, Spiroski M, Kocarev L, and Atanasovski V with 82 to 52 papers. The rest of the authors affiliated to Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje have published less than 52 papers each (Fig. 3).
Scopus Hirsh index (h-index) for the top ten authors affiliated to Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje was presented as calculated by Scopus. We can see from the   (Fig. 4 left). Most of the papers affiliated to Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje originate from Macedonia (3451 papers), from Yugoslavia (336 papers), from United States (210 papers), and from Germany (207 papers). The rest of the countries participate with less than 200 papers (Fig. 4 right). The appearance of the names of other countries means that authors from the other countries are coauthors of the papers with the authors from Ss Cyril and Methodius University.

Figure 4: Current documents by affiliation (left) and current documents by country (right) from the Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia in the Scopus database (1960-2014).
Documents by type and documents by subject area are published by Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, shown in Fig. 5. Articles are the most dominant type of documents (64.5%) followed by conference papers (28.7%), and review articles (2.5%). The rest of the documents are distributed in less than 2.0% (letters, book chapters, articles in press, notes, editorials, short surveys, undefined and others) (Fig. 5 left). Medicine is represented with 24.4% in the published papers by Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, engineering with 23.9%, computer science with 18.3%, chemistry with 12.3%, biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology with 12.0%, physics and astronomy with 10.5%. The rest of the subjects are represented in less than 10% (Fig. 5 right). Analysis of author rank is very sensitive issue.
In this analysis total number of published papers in Scopus database was bigger than the number of papers affiliated to Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje in the same database. These differences are caused by affiliation changes of the top ten authors. For example, Dimirovski GM was affiliated with 121 papers to Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and the rest of 139 papers are affiliated to Dogus Universitesi Istanbul, School of Engineering, Istanbul, Turkey.
Similarly, Soptrajanov B, Polenakovic M, and Kocarev L have additional profiles (not calculated in this analysis) as a result of their affiliation to Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Additional problems arise when author impact analysis search is used: i) some authors have used different names in different periods of time; ii) some authors transliterate their names in several different ways; iii) some authors add or do not add "v"; iv) some authors use only one of their two surnames; v) there are some identical names and surnames in the world for different researchers [10]. All of this variability is recognized as author ambiguity. One of the effective solutions for ambiguity resolution is registration of researchers in the ResearchersID (http://www.researcherid.com/) [11] and in the ORCID (http://orcid.org/) [12]. The Scopus Author Identifier assigns a unique number to groups of documents written by the same author via an algorithm that matches authorship based on a certain criteria. If a document cannot be confidently matched with an author identifier, it is grouped separately. In this case, you may see more than 1 entry for the same author [13,14]. Identification of authors with all their variations and papers they published (ambiguity resolution) is the sole responsibility of the authors.
For the first time in Republic of Macedonia, current scientific impact of academic staff employed at the Institutes of the Faculty of Medicine, Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, was analyzed and published. Based on different citation values and citation indexes, it was concluded that Institutes of the Faculty of Medicine are very heterogeneous with three groups of institutes: institutes with higher scientific impact; institutes with intermediate scientific impact, and institutes with low scientific impact [15]. Scientific impact of all institutions connected with education and research should be analyzed and available publicly in order to follow the development of academic staff and institutions in which they are affiliated.