A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases
Arezoo Aghaei Chadegani
Islamic Azad University; University Kebangsaan Malaysia
Hadi Salehi
Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch
Melor Md Yunus
National University of Malaysia - Faculty of Education
Hadi Farhadi
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia-Research Center for Islamic Economics and Finance (EKONIS-UKM)
Masood Fooladi
Islamic Azad University, Mobarakeh Branch
Maryam Farhadi
National University of Malaysia
Nader Ale Ebrahim
University of Malaya (UM) - Department of Engineering Design and Manufacture, Faculty of Engineering; University of Malaya (UM) - Research Support Unit, Centre of Research Services, Institute of Research Management and Monitoring (IPPP)
April 7, 2013
Asian Social Science, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 18-26, April 27, 2013
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.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 9
Keywords: web of science, scopus, database, citations, provenance, coverage, searching, citation tracking, impact factor, indexing, h-index, researcher profile, researcher ID
JEL Classification: L1, L11, L7, M11, M12, M1, M54, Q1, O1, O3, Q31, Q32, P24, P42, P29, L17
Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: April 29, 2013 ; Last revised: May 9, 2013
Suggested Citation
A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases by Arezoo Aghaei Chadegani, Hadi Salehi, Melor Md Yunus, Hadi Farhadi, Masood Fooladi, Maryam Farhadi, Nader Ale Ebrahim :: SSRN