Using Scopus to Study Researchers’ Citing Behavior for Local Collection Decisions: A Focus on Psychology

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the University of Houston has engaged in a campus-wide effort to raise the university to Tier-One status. The initiative has led to a significant increase in faculty's research output in the field of psychology. This dynamic change inspired the Psychology Librarian and Collection Coordinator to embark on a citation analysis to investigate two questions: how has faculty been using information for their research and how does the library's collection meet the research needs of faculty? In addition to reporting these findings, the article also describes how to use features in Scopus to simplify the data collection process.

KEYWORDS:

• citation analysis
• psychology collection development
• usage reports
• collection assessment methodology