Next to the aim of supporting the academic community with robust results using reliable data in the analyses mentioned, providing access to raw data is an essential component in securing advancement of the bibliometric field. Until 2014, Elsevier supported bibliometricians with data using the Elsevier Bibliometric Research Program (EBRP). The program provided precompiled data sets to researchers, after a scientific board reviewed and approved a submitted proposal. Its aim was to enable external research groups or individual researchers in the field of bibliometrics and quantitative research assessment to carry out strategic research using Elsevier data and to present the outcomes in peer-reviewed journal papers and at international conferences.
Since 2014, application programming interfaces (APIs) have taken over the role of providing access to raw data, allowing free use for scientific purposes, such as the text-and-data-mining resources and Scopus APIs for academic research purposes . Use of the APIs does not require a Scopus subscription1; without a subscription, users will have limited access to basic metadata for most citation records, as well as to basic search functionality. Full access to Scopus APIs is only granted to subscribers of Scopus.
In addition, Scopus data have been available in bulk for research groups. Research groups working with bulk Scopus data include CWTS , SciMago , DZHW , SciTech Strategies ), and others through tailored agreements that have been established between these groups and Elsevier.
The mission of the International Center for the Study of Research (ICSR) is to advance research evaluation in all fields of knowledge production. To foster this development, the ICSR provides access to a working environment where new ideas and hypotheses can be tested against high-quality, large data sets. This platform, offering a virtual laboratory, will allow researchers to collaboratively develop indicators and methodologies. Elsevier is providing computational access to Scopus data for research purposes on this platform, free of charge. This will also enhance the reproducibility of scientometric studies, by enabling other researchers to verify published research findings using the same data set and methodologies with shared code. Researchers can use the environment for such academic, noncommercial purposes, and access will be organized by the ICSR to review submitted proposals for use of the lab as well as actively reaching out to researchers to collaboratively work on specific research problems. The platform allows researchers to create and extract aggregate derivatives that can be published as part of their work, under the condition that the source of the data is acknowledged. At the moment of writing, this platform is not yet publicly available and will be announced through the ICSR website (International Center for the Study of Research, 2019).