Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is an interdisciplinary citation index

Citation index

A citation index is a kind of bibliographic database, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. The first citation indices were legal citators such as Shepard's Citations...

 product of Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters Corporation is a provider of information for the world's businesses and professionals and is created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. Thomson Reuters is headquartered at 3 Times Square, New York City, USA...

' Healthcare & Science division. It was developed by the Institute for Scientific Information

Institute for Scientific Information

The Institute for Scientific Information was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare & Science business of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters Corporation.ISI offered...

 (ISI) from the Science Citation Index

Science Citation Index

The Science Citation Index is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information and created by Eugene Garfield in 1960, which is now owned by Thomson Reuters. The larger version covers more than 6,500 notable and significant journals, across 150 disciplines, from ...

.

This citation database covers some 2,474 of the world's leading journals

Academic journal

An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...

 of social sciences

Social sciences

Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...

 across more than 50 disciplines. It is made available online through the Web of Science

Web of Science

ISI Web of Knowledge is an academic citation indexing and search service, which is combined with web linking and provided by Thomson Reuters. Web of Knowledge coverage encompasses the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. It provides bibliographic content and the tools to access, analyze,...

service for a fee. This database product provides information to identify the articles cited most frequently and by what publisher and author.

Criticisms

In 2004 economists Daniel 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.

External links

• Introduction to SSCI