Nazarbayev University LibGuides: Research Metrics: Comparison of Sources

Comparison: Scopus, Web of Science & Google Scholar

Features	Scopus	Web of Science Core Collection	Google Scholar
Number of journals	21,950 (22,800 if include trade pubs)	13,100 (20,556 if include ESCI)	Unknown
Proceedings	8 million	10.5 million	Unknown
Focus	Physical sciences, health sciences, life sciences, social sciences & humanities	Science, technology, social sciences, arts and humanities	All subject areas
Period covered	1970-	1945-present; if Century of Science purchased, coverage back to1900	Unknown
Non-English	Yes, if it has an English abstract; about 20% of journals are non-English	Yes, if it has an English abstract	Articles published in many languages
# Published outside North America	16,000	14,420 (20,420 if include ESCI)	Unknown
Interdisciplinary field coverage	Strength	Weakness	Strength
Updated	Daily	Daily	Unknown
Developer/Producer	Elsevier	Clarivate Analytics	Google
Citation analysis	Yes	Yes	No
Mark records	Yes	Yes	Yes, but requires login
Export records	Yes - en masse	Yes - en masse	Yes - en masse if you mark records which saves to My Library - then export from within My Library
Export reports	Robust - many options	Export to Excel (and text)	Copy/Paste only
Alerts service	Yes	Yes	Yes
Author profiles	Auto-generated by Scopus – edits only done by Scopus staff	Author-created as part of Publons – edited by authors	Author created and edited
Strengths	Visually stunning author and citation reports International and specialized disciplinary coverage Includes Altmetrics when available (on abstract page) Includes in-press articles	Covers only "journals of influence" Coverage back to 1900 Organization name unification Publisher neutral (they are an info provider, not a publisher)	Includes all types of documents - e.g., tutorials, posters, presentations Finds more citations in most subject areas Book coverage via Google Books and free online publications. International and interdisciplinary coverage
Weaknesses	Early reports pointed out weak in social sciences and humanities Studies show still weak in sociology and physics/astronomy Typographical errors in records	Covers only "journals of influence" Difficulty searching unusual author name formats: hyphenated, compound names, umlauts, etc. Punctuation issues - e.g., ampersands in journal titles.	Difficult to narrow down common author name searches Few sorting options Questionable content Problems correctly ingesting meta-data from PDF files Many non-peer-reviewed sources Have to create a Scholar Citation Profile to create reports

(Last updated Jan. 13, 2022)

Table from the guide Database Comparisons, by Iowa State University Library. Available: [URL]

Disclaimer: Web of Science coverage in this chart refers to the Web of Science Core Collection excluding Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) unless noted otherwise.

Credits: Table originally modified from Scopus vs. Web of Science Comparison Chart (from Univ of Washington Health Sciences Library), information from the ADAT Database Comparison Tool, and the HLWIKI Canada page. All of which are no longer available.

Sources: Clarivate Analytics webpages about Web of Science Core Collection and personal communication with their staff; Scopus Coverage Content Guide.