A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases

Aghaei Chadegani, Arezoo and Salehi, Hadi and Md Yunus, Melor and Farhadi, Hadi and Fooladi, Masood and Farhadi, Maryam and Ale Ebrahim, Nader (2013): A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases. Published in: Asian Social Science , Vol. 9, No. 5 (27 April 2013): pp. 18-26.

Abstract

Nowadays, the world’s scientific community has been publishing an enormous number of papers in different scientific fields. In such environment, it is essential to know which databases are equally efficient and objective for literature searches. It seems that two most extensive databases are Web of Science and Scopus. Besides searching the literature, these two databases used to rank journals in terms of their productivity and the total citations received to indicate the journals impact, prestige or influence. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive comparison of these databases to answer frequent questions which researchers ask, such as: How Web of Science and Scopus are different? In which aspects these two databases are similar? Or, if the researchers are forced to choose one of them, which one should they prefer? For answering these questions, these two databases will be compared based on their qualitative and quantitative characteristics.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: web of science, scopus, database, citations, provenance, coverage, searching, citation tracking, impact factor, indexing, h-index, researcher profile, researcher ID
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I0 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I23 - Higher Education ; Research Institutions; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O10 - General; Z - Other Special Topics > Z0 - General; Z - Other Special Topics > Z0 - General > Z00 - General; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z18 - Public Policy

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