Research On The Impact Of WoS And Scopus's Discipline Classification On The Evaluation Of Disciplinary Academic Competitiveness

Under the wave of "Double First-class" construction,the evaluation result of discipline competitiveness has become an important reference for education departments or universities for resource allocation.The disciplinary academic competitiveness is a core indicator of disciplinary competitiveness.WoS or Scopus,The two major journal index database has become the main basis for evaluating disciplinary academic competitiveness.From the perspective of discipline classification,the study developed a software tool for the measurement of discrepancies in classification systems based on the study of differences in methods of classification between different disciplines,and measured the discrepancies between the classification systems of the two database.Ten well-known universities have verified the impact of discrepancies in discipline classification system on the evaluation results of academic competitiveness.This study found:1)WoS and Scopus discipline classification system is similar,both have the same level of category concept category is not balanced,the boundary is not clear,covered under the categories of the phenomenon of a large difference in the type of journal.In particular,the number of multi-disciplinary journals covered by the average category in Scopus is as high as 70%,and it is bound to cause a paper to be repeatedly counted in multiple disciplines in the evaluation of academic results.2)If the discipline with the highest similarity value in another system is selected as the matching discipline for each discipline,the "discipline" level category between the "discipline" level categories in the two major database discipline classification systems is calculated to match the "discipline".Pairs can be divided into three groups:"highly similar","moderately similar" and "lowly similar".The empirical results show that the classification differences between the two major database disciplines directly affect the evaluation results of academic competitiveness.Among them,the evaluation results of the six highly similar "discipline pairs" are basically the same,the evaluation results based on the two databases are consistent;in the 15 intermediate similarity "discipline pairs",the boundaries of mathematics,materials science and other disciplines are clear "discipline pairs".There is no significant difference in the evaluation results,and there is a significant difference in the assessment results of disciplines that are too large and cross-cutting in engineering,social sciences,and other disciplines;and there is a large disparity in the number of journals covered by low-degree similar "discipline pairs" in the eight groups.The value is extremely low and not comparable.The results of study show that the evaluation results of academic competitiveness of any discipline are affected by the discipline classification system.The basic data of evaluation criteria for different disciplines are the same as the evaluation indicators,which are also important factors affecting the evaluation results.Although the academic achievements of each institution's output are objective and invariable,the differences in collection literature and classification methods in different databases have resulted in different evaluation results.Therefore,it is necessary to correctly understand the evaluation results of academic competitiveness of various third-party disciplines.This study not only provides an important reference for how to choose a database in the evaluation of academic academic competitiveness at the academic level,but also provides an empirical basis for public understanding of how to correctly understand the evaluation results of globally renowned discipline rankings.