International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)

Inclusion Policy

See our web site for full details of our editorial policy. IBSS relies heavily on expert advice from individual academics (our Editorial Advisory Board) and specialist institutions for the selection of material. In addition to journal items (articles and book reviews), IBSS includes books taken from LSE's catalogue, which we enhance where possible by adding chapter information. When evaluating journal material, the following criteria are used:

Minimum standards and practicalities

• journals covered should be of a scholarly nature and contain analytical articles, ideally peer reviewed and with an editorial board containing respected academics.
• IBSS does not cover newspapers, magazines, reports, information bulletins, statistical reports or professional publications. However, in exceptional circumstances they may be considered.

Language of publication

• IBSS's main languages are English; French; German; Italian; Portuguese; Russian and Spanish
• IBSS can also consider submissions in related European languages
• Journals in other languages should usually have title translations and/or abstracts in one of the main languages

Subject coverage

• All journals must be relevant to IBSS's subject coverage

International coverage

IBSS aims to maintain international material as a key element of its coverage by including:

• Journals that have an international editorial board
• Journals that are international and comparative in scope, or which have a regional focus other than the US or UK
• Journals published outside UK or US: for unsolicited journal submissions, priority will be given (80%) to titles published outside the US or UK

Importance to social science research in the UK

This is judged with reference to IBSS's Editorial Advisory Board and the collection of the LSE Library, in particular the recommendations for teaching and research put to the Serials Review Group here.

Open access publishing

Open access journals help to bring research to a wider audience, particularly for researchers in developing countries. IBSS therefore favourably considers open access journals, subject to academic quality and subject relevance.

Geographical Coverage

• UK. 25%
• Europe. 39%
• World. 36%

Please note that the breakdown given refers to place of publication of journals currently indexed, rather than to geographic focus of titles or article-level data.

Gap Fill Policy

Each time IBSS logs a new issue of a journal, a note is made of gaps and IBSS seeks to fill them.

Archive Policy

If IBSS covers a title from near the beginning, we aim to go back a year or so to cover from the beginning. However we do not have the capacity to include a large archive retrospectively.

Embargo Rules

None

Update Frequency

• Weekly - Ovid/SP; EBSCO
• Fortnightly - CSA

Content Classification

All articles are assigned to one of the four core subject areas (anthropology, economics, politics, sociology).

Keywords and Indexes

IBSS indexes items using a controlled vocabulary of c. 10,000 terms.

Authority Files

• Journal names - these are controlled for material entering the database since 1989. However, for pre-1989 material no control is used.
• Author names - these are not controlled
• Author affiliations - we do not control these, but do have an authority list against which our editors check for consistency/accuracy.

Citation Linking

None

Full Text Linking

Open URL compliancy on all interfaces. All full text links set up at institutional level.

Other Information

Notes on fields left blank in spreadsheet:

• Publication type: IBSS covers mainly scholarly journals containing peer-reviewed articles. However a few magazines are included where these are important in their field.
• Cover to cover: we have indicated "No" for material that comes to us pre-edited from one of our international data contributers, for instance by the Bibliotheque de Sciences Po, Paris, or the Polish Ethnographic Society, Lodz, since this material is selectively edited. Material inexed in house has been cover to cover since c 1989. (These have not been given a Yes because we are unable to state for each title whether this is true for more than 50% of our coverage of that title).
• Abstracts: we note in the 'notes' field in each journal entry where abstracts are available. IBSS began including publisher abstracts in its records in c 1999-2000. However we are unable to calculate title by title whether we have abstracts for more than 50% of the records in the database. Current abstract rate stands at about 75%.
• Full text: IBSS does not have full text of articles within its database, however links can be set up to most institutional subscriptions. As with abstracts, we are unable to calculate title by title whether full text links may be available for more than 50% of our coverage. Links can also be set up to library catalogues and pay-per-view document delivery.