ISSN 0147-6882, Scientific and Technical Information Processing, 2018, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 106–109. © Allerton Press, Inc., 2018. Original Russian Text © I.V. Zibareva, L.Yu. Ilina, B.L. Alperin, 2018, published in Nauchno-Tekhnicheskaya Informatsiya, Seriya 1: Organizatsiya i Metodika Informatsionnoi Raboty, 2018, No. 6, pp. 7–11. 106 Russian Science Citation Index: Areas for Development Identified by Active Users I. V. Zibareva a, *, L. Yu. Ilina a, **, and B. L. Alperin a, *** a Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, 630090 Russia *e-mail: zibareva@catalysis.ru **e-mail: ilina@catalysis.ru ***e-mail: alperin@catalysis.ru Received March 30, 2018 Abstract—The current state of the Russian Science Citation Index is analyzed. Several areas for its further development identified by long-standing active users, such as data searching, refinement, and storage; cur- rent user alerts; data input with the Science Index license; patent information; and the application program- ming interface (API) are investigated. Keywords: bibliometric indicators, databases, RSCI, Science Index, WoS, Scopus, CAPlus, scientific and technical information, patent information, current alerts, application programming interface, API DOI: 10.3103/S0147688218020119 INTRODUCTION The Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) was created by Russia’s Scientific Electronic Library (eli- brary.ru) more than a decade ago. At present, the RSCI is the only common search, information, and analytical full-text platform that collects data on pub- lications by Russian authors and organizations and their citations in Russian and foreign publications from Russian scientific periodicals, patent literature, and other sources. The information array of the RSCI includes more than 6000 domestic journals, 400000 scientists and 10000 organizations [1, 2]. The RSCI also contains data on all publications of Russian scien- tists and their citations included in the global Scopus database [3]. In total, the RSCI covers almost the entire domestic information array, which has been growing over recent years by ca. 900 000 publications per year [1, 2]. The Science Index (SI) analytical superstructure was created for authors (SI-A), organi- zations (SI-O) [4] and publishing houses (SI-P) in 2011. It allows individual scientists, scientific organi- zations, and editorial boards, among others, to control and describe their related information, including the ability to add publications independently. Currently, SI-A covers more than 380000 individual scientists and SI-O includes more than 800 organizations. In 2015, approximately 650 Russian journals indexed by the RSCI were deployed as a separate RSCI database on the Web of Science (WoS) platform [5, 6]. In addi- tion, the RSCI is a unique source of bibliometric data on Russian science. More than 30 different bibliomet- ric indicators are calculated in the RSCI for each sci- entist, organization, and journal. Access to the RSCI is open. Overall, the RSCI is a modern information and analytical system (CRIS, Current Research Infor- mation System) [7]. For as long as the RSCI has existed, its content and its functional and analytical capabilities have been analyzed and the related advantages and disadvantages have been discussed [2–15]. To understand the role and place of the RSCI in the modern information space, it is appropriate to compare it to several of the top global polythematic information resources, such as WoS and Scopus. Thus, the RSCI, WoS (Core Col- lection, WoS-CC), and Scopus have been recently ana- lyzed in terms of functionality, completeness, and accuracy of bibliometric indicators obtained for the publication activity of scientific organizations [8]. The main conclusions that we share are as follows: (1) the WoS-CC is the ultimate leader in terms of functional- ity, user friendliness, and content quality and (2) the RSCI is a unique domestic resource whose function- ality can be further improved with regard to the fol- lowing procedures: search and retrieval of relevant data; analytical and statistical data processing; and bib- liometric analysis. The major functional shortcomings of the RSCI are as follows: for searching, the lack of both standard and unique search operators in the search functionality (a search is limited to the frame- works and filters offered by the provider); for specifi- cation, the lack of a publication language filter for entries; and for saving, limited ability to upload infor- mation for analytical processing (the RSCI on the WoS platform offers such an option). The SI-O license allows organizations to upload their publications only in XML format, which is oriented towards program-