The scholarly database and its utility for scientometrics research

The Scholarly Database (SDB) at Indiana University aims to serve researchers and practitioners interested in the analysis, modeling, and visualization of large-scale scholarly datasets. This database focuses on supporting large studies of changes in science over time and communicating findings via knowledge-domain visualizations. The database currently provides access to around 18 million publications, patents, and grants, ten percent of which contain full-text abstracts. Except for some datasets with restricted access conditions, the data can be retrieved in raw or pre-processed format using either a web-based or relational database client. This paper motivates the need for the database from bibliometric and scientometric perspectives (Cronin & Atkins, 2000; White & McCain, 1989). It explains the database design, setup, and interfaces as well as the temporal, geographical, and topic coverage of datasets currently served. Planned work and the potential for this database to become a global test bed for information science research are discussed.