Finding Doppelgängers in Scopus: how to build scientists control groups using sosia

Michael E. Rose () and Stefano H. Baruffaldi
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Michael E. Rose: Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Stefano H. Baruffaldi: Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

Scientometrics, 2025, vol. 130, issue 5, No 21, 3013-3028

Abstract: Abstract The construction of control groups of scientists is often a daunting effort. This paper presents sosia, an open-source Python-based software designed to efficiently query the Scopus database via RESTful API. sosia searches for researchers with publication profiles similar to a given researcher up to a given year based on all main standard bibliometric indicators. The user can choose flexibly a set of parameters to restrict the search to more or less narrow boundaries upfront and obtain additional similarity indicators to select a subset of authors after the search. Advanced settings also allow narrowing the search to a list of affiliations and to minimize the possible errors arising from ambiguous author profiles. One basic search can be set up in a few command lines and the average time of computation goes between 60 and 300 minutes. We discuss the functioning, characteristics, limitations and possible extension of the software.

Keywords: Statistical doftware; Control group; Diff-in-diff; Scopus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 C00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-025-05298-y

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