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Red alert: Millions of "homeless" publications in Scopus should be resettled.

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Title: Red alert: Millions of "homeless" publications in Scopus should be resettled.
Authors: Liu, Weishu1, Wang, Haifeng2 wanghf@shisu.edu.cn
Source: Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology. Oct2025, Vol. 76 Issue 10, p1283-1291. 9p.
Subjects: Databases, Bibliographic databases, Research funding, Data curation, Authorship, Descriptive statistics, Bibliographical citations, Scholarly communication, Bibliography, Publishing, Metadata, Bibliographic methodology, Information retrieval, Comparative studies, Orthography & spelling
Abstract: Scopus is increasingly regarded as a high‐quality and reliable data source for research and evaluation of scientific and scholarly activity. However, a puzzling phenomenon has been discovered occasionally: millions of records with author affiliation information collected in Scopus are oddly labeled as "country‐undefined" by Scopus, which is rarely detected in its counterpart Web of Science. This huge number of "homeless" records in Scopus will challenge the reliability of various Scopus‐based literature retrieval, analysis and evaluation and therefore is unacceptable for a widely used high‐quality bibliographic database. By using data from the past 124 years, this article tries to probe these affiliated but country‐undefined records in Scopus. Our analysis identifies four primary causes for these "homeless" records: incomplete author affiliation addresses, Scopus' inability to recognize different variants of country/territory names, misspelled country/territory names in author affiliation addresses, and Scopus' insufficiency in correctly splitting and identifying the clean affiliation addresses. To address this pressing issue, we put forward several recommendations to relevant stakeholders, with the aim of resettling millions of "homeless" records in Scopus and reducing its potential impact on Scopus‐based literature retrieval, analysis, and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Database: Engineering Source
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  Data: Red alert: Millions of "homeless" publications in Scopus should be resettled.
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  Data: Scopus is increasingly regarded as a high‐quality and reliable data source for research and evaluation of scientific and scholarly activity. However, a puzzling phenomenon has been discovered occasionally: millions of records with author affiliation information collected in Scopus are oddly labeled as "country‐undefined" by Scopus, which is rarely detected in its counterpart Web of Science. This huge number of "homeless" records in Scopus will challenge the reliability of various Scopus‐based literature retrieval, analysis and evaluation and therefore is unacceptable for a widely used high‐quality bibliographic database. By using data from the past 124 years, this article tries to probe these affiliated but country‐undefined records in Scopus. Our analysis identifies four primary causes for these "homeless" records: incomplete author affiliation addresses, Scopus' inability to recognize different variants of country/territory names, misspelled country/territory names in author affiliation addresses, and Scopus' insufficiency in correctly splitting and identifying the clean affiliation addresses. To address this pressing issue, we put forward several recommendations to relevant stakeholders, with the aim of resettling millions of "homeless" records in Scopus and reducing its potential impact on Scopus‐based literature retrieval, analysis, and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
– Name: AbstractSuppliedCopyright
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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      – SubjectFull: Research funding
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      – SubjectFull: Bibliographical citations
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      – SubjectFull: Scholarly communication
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      – SubjectFull: Bibliography
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      – SubjectFull: Publishing
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      – SubjectFull: Comparative studies
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      – TitleFull: Red alert: Millions of "homeless" publications in Scopus should be resettled.
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              Text: Oct2025
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