Introducing the world's first online tool to identify and aggregate an organization's research output portfolio. The Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1 facilitates faster decision-making Amsterdam, The Netherlands December 13, 2007 - Scopus(r), the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, today announced that a sought after literature research tool, the Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1 will be launched in January. This new feature will speed up the search process by enabling users to find all the documents belonging to a specific organization. Doing so will save users valuable time which can be better invested in performing the actual research analysis. The Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1 is a unique tool which automatically identifies and matches an organization with all its research output. Scopus is the first to offer its customers this organizational matching functionality across its entire database of over 15,000 peer reviewed journals. This will be welcome news for deans, faculty heads, researchers and funding bodies who understand just how difficult and time-consuming this task has been up to now. Using a combination of sophisticated algorithms and a comprehensive knowledge base, the Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1 will quicken the rate at which data can be collated for research performance measurement at the institutional level. The feature automatically matches the multiple name variants attributed to an organization. This is extremely useful where several name variants of an organization may exist or may be recorded differently by publishing authors. One such an example is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where articles found in Scopus and published by authors belonging to this institute carry more than 1,700 name variants. Other reasons for these numbers of variations can be attributed to organizations changing their name, having similar names, or they may merge or separate. This can make it challenging to clearly identify a single organization's complete body of work. "Up until now we have had to employ personnel to carry out this mammoth task. It is both a slow and expensive process. The Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1 produces the same results in significantly less time. This not only helps us to reduce the number of staff needed but also allows us to focus on research analysis rather than data collection and filtering activities." says David Clay is Deputy Head of Academic Liaison and Finance at the University of Liverpool. The Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1 makes it easier for him to evaluate his own institution and others. Users will benefit immediately from the initial version of the Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1, available in January. The next phase, scheduled for release in the first half of 2008, will offer users enhanced functionalities. Scopus is actively soliciting feedback from individual organizations in order to enhance the data clarity. "We are delighted to be able to introduce the Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1 to the market," says Niels Weertman, Director Product Management Scopus. "We've invested heavily in developing a feature that will deliver significant time and cost benefits to our users. Ultimately it will help deans, chancellors and faculty heads make resource allocation and strategic planning decisions more efficiently." For further information on Scopus or the Scopus Affiliation Identifier Phase 1, please visit: www.info.scopus.com/affiliationidentifier. For feedback on the Scopus Affiliation Identifier, please contact: affiliationfeedback@scopus.com. About Scopus Covering the world's research literature, Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality Web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Scopus is designed and developed with over 500 users and librarians internationally. Its unique database contains abstracts and references from over 15,000 peer-reviewed journals from 4,000 publishers worldwide, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage. In addition, Scopus not only offers users citation information about the articles covered, but also integrates Web and patent searches directly from its clean and simple interface. Direct links to full-text articles, library resources and other applications like reference management software, make Scopus quicker, easier and more comprehensive to use than any other literature research tool. For more information about Scopus please visit www.info.scopus.com. http://www.info.scopus.com/news/press/www.info.scopus.com. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.