IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v81y2009i2d10.1007_s11192-009-2178-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A comparison of Scopus and Web of Science for a typical university

Author

Listed:
  • Elizabeth S. Vieira

    (Universidade do Porto)

  • José A. N. F. Gomes

    (Universidade do Porto)

Abstract

For many years, the ISI Web of Knowledge from Thomson Reuters was the sole publication and citation database covering all areas of science thus becoming an invaluable tool in bibliometric analysis. In 2004, Elsevier introduced Scopus and this is rapidly becoming a good alternative. Several attempts have been made at comparing these two instruments from the point of view of journal coverage for research or for bibliometric assessment of research output. This paper attempts to answer the question that all researchers ask, i.e., what is to be gained by searching both databases? Or, if you are forced to opt for one of them, which should you prefer? To answer this question, a detailed paper by paper study is presented of the coverage achieved by ISI Web of Science and by Scopus of the output of a typical university. After considering the set of Portuguese universities, the detailed analysis is made for two of them for 2006, the two being chosen for their comprehensiveness typical of most European universities. The general conclusion is that about 2/3 of the documents referenced in any of the two databases may be found in both databases while a fringe of 1/3 are only referenced in one or the other. The citation impact of the documents in the core present in both databases is higher, but the impact of the fringe that are present only in one of the databases should not be disregarded as some high impact documents may be found among them.

Suggested Citation

  • Elizabeth S. Vieira & José A. N. F. Gomes, 2009. "A comparison of Scopus and Web of Science for a typical university," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(2), pages 587-600, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:81:y:2009:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-009-2178-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-009-2178-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-009-2178-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-009-2178-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lokman I. Meho & Yvonne Rogers, 2008. "Citation counting, citation ranking, and h‐index of human‐computer interaction researchers: A comparison of Scopus and Web of Science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(11), pages 1711-1726, September.
    2. Norris, Michael & Oppenheim, Charles, 2007. "Comparing alternatives to the Web of Science for coverage of the social sciences’ literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 161-169.
    3. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "Which h-index? — A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 257-271, February.
    4. Liwen Vaughan & Debora Shaw, 2008. "A new look at evidence of scholarly citation in citation indexes and from web sources," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 317-330, February.
    5. Lokman I. Meho & Kiduk Yang, 2007. "Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of science versus scopus and google scholar," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(13), pages 2105-2125, November.
    6. Bar-Ilan, Judit & Levene, Mark & Lin, Ayelet, 2007. "Some measures for comparing citation databases," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 26-34.
    7. Félix Moya-Anegón & Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez & Benjamín Vargas-Quesada & Elena Corera-Álvarez & Francisco José Muñoz-Fernández & Antonio González-Molina & Victor Herrero-Solana, 2007. "Coverage analysis of Scopus: A journal metric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(1), pages 53-78, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Massimo Franceschet, 2010. "A comparison of bibliometric indicators for computer science scholars and journals on Web of Science and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(1), pages 243-258, April.
    2. García-Pérez, Miguel A., 2011. "Strange attractors in the Web of Science database," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 214-218.
    3. García-Pérez, Miguel A., 2012. "An extension of the h index that covers the tail and the top of the citation curve and allows ranking researchers with similar h," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 689-699.
    4. Teja Koler-Povh & Primož Južnič & Goran Turk, 2014. "Impact of open access on citation of scholarly publications in the field of civil engineering," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1033-1045, February.
    5. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2010. "Citations to the “Introduction to informetrics” indexed by WOS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 495-506, March.
    6. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner & Schier, Hermann & Rahm, Erhard & Thor, Andreas & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2009. "Convergent validity of bibliometric Google Scholar data in the field of chemistry—Citation counts for papers that were accepted by Angewandte Chemie International Edition or rejected but published els," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 27-35.
    7. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    8. López-Illescas, Carmen & de Moya-Anegón, Félix & Moed, Henk F., 2008. "Coverage and citation impact of oncological journals in the Web of Science and Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 304-316.
    9. Gaby Haddow & Paul Genoni, 2010. "Citation analysis and peer ranking of Australian social science journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 471-487, November.
    10. Anne-Wil Harzing, 2013. "A preliminary test of Google Scholar as a source for citation data: a longitudinal study of Nobel prize winners," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 1057-1075, March.
    11. Parul Khurana & Kiran Sharma, 2022. "Impact of h-index on author’s rankings: an improvement to the h-index for lower-ranked authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4483-4498, August.
    12. Peder Olesen Larsen & Markus Ins, 2010. "The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 575-603, September.
    13. Vladimir Pislyakov, 2009. "Comparing two “thermometers”: Impact factors of 20 leading economic journals according to Journal Citation Reports and Scopus," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 79(3), pages 541-550, June.
    14. Antonio Cavacini, 2015. "What is the best database for computer science journal articles?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2059-2071, March.
    15. António Correia & Hugo Paredes & Benjamim Fonseca, 2018. "Scientometric analysis of scientific publications in CSCW," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(1), pages 31-89, January.
    16. Christoph Bartneck, 2017. "Reviewers’ scores do not predict impact: bibliometric analysis of the proceedings of the human–robot interaction conference," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 179-194, January.
    17. Halevi, Gali & Moed, Henk & Bar-Ilan, Judit, 2017. "Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation—Review of the Literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 823-834.
    18. Zhang, Lin & Thijs, Bart & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2011. "The diffusion of H-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 583-593.
    19. Wang, Qi & Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "Large-scale analysis of the accuracy of the journal classification systems of Web of Science and Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 347-364.
    20. Daniel Torres-Salinas & Emilio Delgado Lopez-Cózar & Evaristo Jiménez-Contreras, 2009. "Ranking of departments and researchers within a university using two different databases: Web of Science versus Scopus," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(3), pages 761-774, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:81:y:2009:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-009-2178-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.