About the Institution Profile Wizard

Scopus builds profiles for an institution from the affiliation text in the articles it indexes. Algorithmic processing identifies documents with affiliation text matching the name variations and links these into same institution profile.

Due to the great variation in the way affiliations are represented by authors and publishers, this automated process can never be exact. Some variants may be missed, others inappropriately included.

Manual review of the alternate names by a person with knowledge of the institution is needed to make sure the profile is complete and correct as possible.

Scopus Institution Profiles can be created at the level of any university, institute, campus or lab which has its own location.

It is not possible to create institution profiles at the departmental level because department names are too common to allow for differentiation.

Within a broad organization, there can be profiles for institutes at many levels, for example a business school operating under a separate name than the main campus. These can also be displayed as a hierarchy.

Alternate names in Affiliation Profiles are the variations of institute's name derived from the affiliation text in the published articles for the institution in question.

The text used by authors and publishers may vary considerably; there may be spell or punctuation errors in an affiliation text, and names may change over time.

That’s the reason we create profiles for an institution to group all their articles together. The institution profile contains all the different names found in the articles that belong to the institution.

In the Institution Profile Wizard, removing an Alternate name will remove any documents in which the affiliation contains that Alternate name from the profile.

Alternate names can sometimes be due to a mistake (e.g. incorrect spelling) made by the author(s) in the affiliation text of an article. Users should take care not to remove an alternate name that is simply wrongly spelled or incorrect because they will not only remove the (incorrect) textual name, but also the attached document(s).

Removing an alternate name will affect linking of documents to the profile, both presently and in future.

In the Institution Profile Wizard, adding an “Alternate name” will cause the profiling algorithm to link all past and future documents with affiliations containing both that Alternate name and the institute’s address to the profile.

This has an effect not only on documents already in Scopus, but also on future matching of documents to the profile.

Please be aware that we can add an Alternate name to the profile only when there is at least one document in document in Scopus where the Alternate name occurs in the affiliations.

Click 'View details' to review the information from documents comprising an alternate name. In the 'View details' display, you can also edit the alternate name by removing documents that do not belong.

The View details display lists information derived from each document associated with the alternate name you are viewing. You may also click on a document title to review the corresponding document details page.

If the documents listed appear to belong to your institution, select 'No'. The alternate name will be removed from/will not be added to the profile.

If the alternate name contains documents from your institution, select 'Yes'.

• The checkboxes for all items are now selected.
• Select 'Apply' to add/include the whole alternate name in your profile.
• If you wish to select at the individual document level, select the checkboxes to deselect them. This will remove those documents from the alternate name.

If you have made any selections at the document level, this has the following effect:

• When reviewing the alternate names in the profile, the documents from an edited alternate name will be retained, but the documents you deselected will be removed from the profile.
• When adding an edited alternate name, only the documents that are still selected will be added to the profile.

You should use the ‘Create New Profile’ workflow only when you do not find a separate profile (using the Scopus Affiliation search form) either existing on its own, or associated with any of your institute's locations, and if it is an important location to track its publication output separately.

It is important to search for existing profiles first in order to avoid creating duplicate profiles for the same institution.

When creating a new profile, after completing the name an address section, you will be able to search for Alternate names to add to the profile. Adding the Alternate names will link documents associated with that name to the new profile.

Various ranking and evaluation organizations use data from Scopus for their calculations, and institutions often rely on this same data for reporting, bibliometrics and other purposes.

Changes to an institution’s profile information via the Institution Profile Wizard impact its hierarchy, the document counts tied to it and subsequently any institutional evaluation performed using Scopus data.

It is therefore important that we restrict access to an institution’s profile and hierarchy to a limited number of people formally authorized as representatives by the institution itself.

The Modify hierarchy page provides the 'Hierarchy work space' which may be used to add an affiliation to a hierarchy.

From the 'Hierarchy work space', click 'Add affiliation to hierarchy'. You now have the option to search for an affiliation to add to the hierarchy.

After selecting profiles from the results, these will appear in 'Affiliations to place'. From here you may drag and drop to a location within the hierarchy, or you may use the numbering system to place them at the correct hierarchy level.

By keeping profiles separate for each location, it helps to measure and analyze publication outputs from those locations.

In the hierarchy display, and on the affiliation details and affiliation search results pages, you can see the number of documents specific to the institution itself, as well as the aggregate document count for the institution plus its component institutions. Clicking these links leads to a result list for the documents.

When institutional evaluation is performed, all affiliations in institution’s hierarchy are grouped together. Hence, we take into consideration documents from all affiliations in hierarchy. As long as all separate profiles are part of hierarchy, having separate institution profiles does not affect any institutional evaluation of your institution.

If you are satisfied with the institution's hierarchy as displayed, click 'Approve hierarchy' to confirm. The hierarchy will become available for viewing on the Affiliation details page within a few days.

Under Modify Profile, you can add one or more secondary addresses. These may be different campuses used in affiliation text, or the institution’s name in a different language.

Depending upon the complexity, changes are made typically within two weeks, and you will be notified when they are complete. Note that it is not possible to make additional changes to the same hierarchy or profile until the first request has been completed.

The hierarchy here is intended to correctly group the publications found in Scopus. It does not attempt to reflect the level of detail found in Pure (or other CRIS or internal management systems).

No, changes to Scopus profile hierarchies are now not automatically updated within SciVal.

SciVal’s institution definitions use Scopus affiliation profiles as building blocks, and changes within individual affiliation profiles are automatically picked up by SciVal. However, SciVal does not yet inherit the hierarchical institution structures from Scopus. If you have added or removed affiliation profiles in a hierarchy within Scopus, and wish to see this reflected in SciVal, you can request manual correction.

How do I request a manual correction of a Scopus affiliation profile for SciVal?