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Joe Riess :: Principal Software Engineer, SciVal

Martin Edling Andersson :: Senior Product Manager, SciVal

Aileen Christensen :: Global Marketing Manager, SciVal

SciVal API: What, where, how.

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Today’s agenda

• Background – Why a SciVal API?

• What is an API and how does an API work

• Differences an API and SciVal.com

• Use cases

• Scope of first release (and what’s not in Scope)

• The Scopus API

• Bringing it all together

• Timelines

• Question/Feedback

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SciVal API

Why use an API?

- Primary: Need to use SciVal metrics to feed internal warehouse

systems, CRIS systems like Pure* and reporting systems like Tableau.

- Secondary : To help research administration and planning office by

pushing university organizational structure from central location to

SciVal.

How?

- The API will allow you to use the most popular metrics from SciVal on

researchers and institutions for use in IR systems, web, and for richer

visualizations in tools like Tableau.

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User research findings: SciVal API use cases

I want to evaluate Peter

Andersen at the

University of Bergen

based on his FWCI

together with his

teaching commitments

and other projects.

I want to conduct

analysis of research

performance using

Tableau because I want

to do more advanced

visualizations and use

data from different

sources.

Create department of

Chemistry in SciVal

based on the structure

and researchers that I

have in our Institutional

Repository.

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First, let’s take a step back - what is an API?

• API = Application Programming Interface

• A way (interface) for programs (application) to talk to one another.

• As comparison: A GUI (Graphical User Interface) is used by humans

to talk to programs.

API

REQUEST

DATA

USER’S

APPLICATION

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Example of how an API works

User’s application

Can I have the

FWCI for author

id #35448793100for 2012 - 2016?

Hello!I know

you!

Sure! It’s

1.21

www

https://api.elsevier.com/metrics/FieldWeightedCitationImpact?apiKey=456789&httpAccept=application%2Fjson&authors=35448793100&yearRange=5yrs&includeSelfCitations=true&byYear=false&includedDocs=AllPublicationTypes&journalImpactType=CiteScore&showAsFieldWeighted=false&indexType=hIndex

{"metric": {"value": 1.214434,"metricType": "FieldWeightedCitationImpact"

}}

Hey

SciVal!It’s me – API key

456789

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An API is just another content delivery mechanism

SciVal.com

Download SciVal

metrics from

anywhere in the

application using

the Export function

Characteristics

Download anything

available but labor

intensive for

repetitive work.

SciVal API

Download the most

common metrics

for institutions and

researchers

Characteristics

Allows for

automation of

repetitive tasks.

Requires some

technical

knowledge

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What is the Scope of the API?

• Retrieve metrics on researchers (author profiles) and institutions1. Scholarly Output

2. Publications in Top Journal Percentiles

3. Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles

4. Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI)

5. Collaboration

6. Citation Count

7. Citations Per Publication (CPP)

8. h-indeces

9. Collaboration Impact

10. Cited Publications

• All metrics options included

• Data for the last 5 years (rolling window)

• Initial limitation of 2000 metric requests per month per user

• 100 ids can be queried in one request.

(86% of all metric calls)

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What are we going to be adding later

• Metrics on Publication sets, Groups of Researchers, Groups of

Institutions, Countries and Groups of Countries.

• Metrics on your “own” entities (API access is not yet tied to My

SciVal)

• Integration with 3rd party commercial CRIS systems - but it is

something we are working on.

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Access through Elsevier Developers

• Delivered through Elsevier Developers together with Scopus, SD,

Embase and EV APIs (dev.elsevier.com).

• The Elsevier Developers

provides:

- API key generation (for

authentication)

- API service agreement (must

be signed for API access)

- Use Policies

- Use cases

- Interactive documentation

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What about the Scopus API?

Simple

Complex

Scopus API Use Cases

Showing publications from Scopus on your website

Showing Scopus cited-by counts on your website

Federated search

Showing SNIP/SJR/CS on journal homepage

Populating IRs with basic document metadata from

Scopus

Populating CRIS with document and citation

overviews from Scopus

Populating publication histories of VIVO profiles

SciVal API Use Cases (beyond 1st release)

Showing SciVal metrics for authors on your website

Showing SciVal metrics for institutions on your

website

Analyzing SciVal data in external visualization tool

(Tableau, plot.ly, etc.)

Populating IRs with author and institutional metics

from SciVal

Populating CRIS with with author and institutional

from SciVal

Future: Using hierarchical structures in SciVal from

CRIS

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Demo.

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Source code available at:

https://github.com/ElsevierDev/apidemo

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What about Pure?

• Pure already has good integration with SciVal

- Researchers and documents can be sent to SciVal for analysis

- Groups of Researchers can be sent to SciVal.

- SciVal can enrich Pure data with Scopus Author IDs.

• We will continue to work with the Pure team for future functionality.

• 2018 - Organizational structures (including hierarchical data) can be sent to SciVal

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Timelines

• 2017 – First release - retrieve metrics through Elsevier Developer Portal

- Analyzing institutions and researchers:

o The FWCI of University of Bath for 2010 to 2015

o The Scholarly Output for Sven Andersson at University of Lund in 2016.

- Documentation in Swagger* format

- Examples based on use cases.

• 2018 - Keep soliciting feedback

- Support for more entities such as Researchers, Groups of Researchers, Countries and Groups of Countries.

- Support for your entities (“My SciVal”)

- Integration with 3rd party CRIS vendors

- What are practical ways of working with organizational structures using the API?

- Other undiscovered use cases?

*Swagger/Open API specification – industry standard documentation format for RESTful Web Services

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Join the Conversation

SciVal TwitterTwitter.com/scival

SciVal Facebook Facebook.com/scival

Research Intelligence YouTubeYoutube.com/channel/UCffqIj7ICiYccxNDPEEjHHg

Research Intelligence LinkedInLinkedin.com/showcase/10576088

Research Intelligence BrightTALKBrighttalk.com/channel/13819/elseviers-research-intelligence

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Questions/Feedback?

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www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence

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