A Preliminary Study for the Creation of a Greek Citation Index in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (GCI – H&SS)

Abstract

This preliminary study aims at examining the major policy issues regarding the formation of a Greek Citation Index. The National Documentation Centre in 2011 has undertaken the task and it is at the stage of establishing policies and setting the goals, the parameters and the collaborations for the currying out of the project. The study examines issues such as: a. the selection of humanities and social sciences as a start of point for the citation index, b. the need to set the goals and objectives of the index in view of the use of impact factor for the assessment of academics and the issues arising from such practices c. the comparison of international to national production of citation indices d. the mechanism needed to establish policies regarding the use of standards, selection of material, the compliance with repository policies and open access practices e. the need to assess the situation within the framework of language (and alphabet) differences, demographics and audience, scientific production within the need to make Greek scientific publications available to the international scientific community and finally f. the decision regarding the creation of an independent national citation index or incorporate it as a part of one of the international citation indices (ERIH, Web of Science, Scopus).