An item-by-item subject classification of papers published in journals covered by the SSCI database using reference analysis

A serious shortcoming of bibliometric studies based on the Social Sciences Citation Index is the lack of a universally applicable subject classificati on scheme as individual papers are concerned. Moreover, the selective cover age of more than thousand scientific journals per annum proved to be an ins uperable obstacle in the delimitation of social science subject areas. Subj ect classification of papers on the basis of assigning journals to subject categories (like those found in the various supplements of ISI databases) w orks well in case of fully covered and highly specialised journals in the s ocial sciences, too, but fails for multidisciplinary and selectively covere d journals. This study presents the results of an item-by-item subject clas sification approach, where assignment is based on the analysis of the subje ct categories of reference literature This analysis extends the results of an earlier study by the authors on the possibility of delimiting subfields in the hard and life sciences based on reference analysis. The assignment proved also reliable for a considerable share of literature in the social sciences. Due to the peculiarities of th e database this share is lower in the SSCI than that in the SCI. Although a n iterated application of the procedure is expected to increase the number of classifiable publications, it is suggested that in the social sciences t he method should be used in combination with other means of subject assignm ent.