Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World

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Abstract

Nowadays, the importance of bibliographic databases (DBs) has increased enormously, as they are the main providers of publication metadata and bibliometric indicators universally used both for research assessment practices and for performing daily tasks. Because the reliability of these tasks firstly depends on the data source, all users of the DBs should be able to choose the most suitable one. Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are the two main bibliographic DBs. The comprehensive evaluation of the DBs’ coverage is practically impossible without extensive bibliometric analyses or literature reviews, but most DBs users do not have bibliometric competence and/or are not willing to invest additional time for such evaluations. Apart from that, the convenience of the DB’s interface, performance, provided impact indicators and additional tools may also influence the users’ choice. The main goal of this work is to provide all of the potential users with an all-inclusive description of the two main bibliographic DBs by gathering the findings that are presented in the most recent literature and information provided by the owners of the DBs at one place. This overview should aid all stakeholders employing publication and citation data in selecting the most suitable DB.

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Most cited references 228

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I propose the index h, defined as the number of papers with citation number > or =h, as a useful index to characterize the scientific output of a researcher.

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The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis

Philippe Mongeon, Adele Paul-Hus (2016)

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Optimal database combinations for literature searches in systematic reviews: a prospective exploratory study

Wichor M. Bramer, Melissa Rethlefsen, Jos Kleijnen … (2017)

Background Within systematic reviews, when searching for relevant references, it is advisable to use multiple databases. However, searching databases is laborious and time-consuming, as syntax of search strategies are database specific. We aimed to determine the optimal combination of databases needed to conduct efficient searches in systematic reviews and whether the current practice in published reviews is appropriate. While previous studies determined the coverage of databases, we analyzed the actual retrieval from the original searches for systematic reviews. Methods Since May 2013, the first author prospectively recorded results from systematic review searches that he performed at his institution. PubMed was used to identify systematic reviews published using our search strategy results. For each published systematic review, we extracted the references of the included studies. Using the prospectively recorded results and the studies included in the publications, we calculated recall, precision, and number needed to read for single databases and databases in combination. We assessed the frequency at which databases and combinations would achieve varying levels of recall (i.e., 95%). For a sample of 200 recently published systematic reviews, we calculated how many had used enough databases to ensure 95% recall. Results A total of 58 published systematic reviews were included, totaling 1746 relevant references identified by our database searches, while 84 included references had been retrieved by other search methods. Sixteen percent of the included references (291 articles) were only found in a single database; Embase produced the most unique references (n = 132). The combination of Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science Core Collection, and Google Scholar performed best, achieving an overall recall of 98.3 and 100% recall in 72% of systematic reviews. We estimate that 60% of published systematic reviews do not retrieve 95% of all available relevant references as many fail to search important databases. Other specialized databases, such as CINAHL or PsycINFO, add unique references to some reviews where the topic of the review is related to the focus of the database. Conclusions Optimal searches in systematic reviews should search at least Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar as a minimum requirement to guarantee adequate and efficient coverage. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13643-017-0644-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.