New Research Article: “Google Scholar, Web Of Science, and Scopus: A Systematic Comparison of Citations in 252 Subject Categories” (Preprint)
The following research article (preprint) was posted today on arXiv.
Title
Google Scholar, Web Of Science, and Scopus: A Systematic Comparison of Citations in 252 Subject Categories
Authors
Alberto Martín-Martín
Universidad de Granada
Enrique Orduna-Malea
Universitat Politècnica de València
Mike Thelwall
University of Wolverhampton
Emilio Delgado López-Cózar
Universidad de Granada
Source
via arXiv
August 15, 2018 (Version 1.1)
Abstract
Despite citation counts from Google Scholar (GS), Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus being widely consulted by researchers and sometimes used in research evaluations, there is no recent or systematic evidence about the differences between them.
In response, this paper investigates 2,448,055 citations to 2,299 English-language highly-cited documents from 252 GS subject categories published in 2006, comparing GS, the WoS Core Collection, and Scopus.
GS consistently found the largest percentage of citations across all areas (93%-96%), far ahead of Scopus (35%-77%) and WoS (27%-73%). GS found nearly all the WoS (95%) and Scopus (92%) citations. Most citations found only by GS were from non-journal sources (48%-65%), including theses, books, conference papers, and unpublished materials. Many were non-English (19%-38%), and they tended to be much less cited than citing sources that were also in Scopus or WoS.
Despite the many unique GS citing sources, Spearman correlations between citation counts in GS and WoS or Scopus are high (0.78-0.99). They are lower in the Humanities, and lower between GS and WoS than between GS and Scopus. The results suggest that in all areas GS citation data is essentially a superset of WoS and Scopus, with substantial extra coverage.
Direct to Full Text Article (Preprint)
22 pages; PDF.
Filed under: Data Files, Journal Articles, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.