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 classification scheme as individual papers are concerned. Subject classification of papers on the basis of assigning journals to subject categories works well in case of fully covered and highly specialized journals, but fails for multidisciplinary and selectively covered journals. This study presents the results of an item-by-item subject classification approach, where assignment is based on the analysis of the subject categories of reference literature. The assignment proved to be reliable for a considerable share of literature in the social sciences. Due to the peculiarities of the SSCI database this share is lower than that in the SCI. Though an iterated application of the procedure may increase the number of classifiable publications, in the social sciences the method is suggested to be used in combination with other methods of subject assignment.