Index Copernicus (IC) is an online

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

of user-contributed information, including profiles of scientists, scientific

institution An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain social behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and ...

publication To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Convention, articl ...

s and

project A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be ...

s. It was established in 1999 in Poland, and is operated by Index Copernicus International. The database, named after

Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath who formulated a mathematical model, model of Celestial spheres#Renaissance, the universe that placed heliocentrism, the Sun rather than Earth at its cen ...

(who triggered the Copernican Revolution), has several assessment tools to track the impact of scientific works and publications, individual scientists, or research institutions. In addition to the productivity aspects, IC also offers the traditional abstracting and indexing of scientific publications.

Origins

The Index Copernicus aimed to offer an alternative to the English language dominance of publication indexing systems. The enterprise was co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the name: "Electronic Publishing House of Scientific Journals system of Index Copernicus Ltd."

Controversy

IC's journal ranking system was criticized in 2013 by

Jeffrey Beall Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist who drew attention to "predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and created Beall's list, a list of potentially predatory open-access publishers. He is a critic of the o ...

because of the alleged high proportion of predatory journals included in it and its suspect evaluation methodology; he characterized the resulting "IC Value" as "a pretty worthless measure". Index Copernicus remains on the list of misleading metrics. Index Copernicus has been repeatedly accused of unethical practices. At the time of partnership between Index Copernicus and the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the project of evaluating Polish universities, Index Copernicus was offering a paid option to speed up the process of indexing journals which in turn was beneficial in the official process of university evaluation that it was overseeing at the same time. Some university libraries advise to "avoid journals displaying metrics from Index Copernicus". Index Copernicus has also become the object of study in context of scientific predatory practices. One researcher that stings predatory publishers by publishing fictitious papers (accepted without review by the publishers) says that journals that show the Index Copernicus on their web site are most likely predatory.

References

External links

* Scientific databases Online databases Polish science websites 1999 establishments in Poland Citation indices {{Poland-stub

Origins

Controversy

See also

References

External links