Beyond the Web of Science (slides from ISSI 2021 Conference)

The Brazilian evaluation system of research and graduate education is under revision. For scientific publishing, policymakers and evaluators consider a more standardised assessment, trading some current qualitative aspects for expanded use of journal-based indicators from international databases such as the Web of Science. This paper aims to provide evidence for a better-informed discussion, analysing the complete data set of Brazilian articles published from 2013-2018 regarding: i) coverage by the WoS and regionally relevant databases (e.g., Latindex, SciELO); ii) incidence of the local language in the country’s publications, and the impact it has on coverage by regional and international databases; iii) disciplinary variations and disparities in thematic coverage across languages and databases. Results show half of the Brazilian article output is not found in the WoS, and the normalised distribution of indexed publications across disciplines is hugely unbalanced. Publications not in WoS are predominantly in Portuguese, with a significant share indexed by regional databases, often addressing topics not covered in WoS. The main conclusion is that Brazilian science goes beyond WoS, and evaluators should strive for a sound and comprehensive assessment to capture its complexity, instead of trading it for restraining, short-sighted simplicity.