Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar citation rates: a case study of medical physics and biomedical engineering: what gets cited and what doesn't?

The h-Index: Understanding its predictors, significance, and criticism

The h-index is an author-level scientometric index used to gauge the significance of a researcher's work. The index is determined by taking the number of publications and the number of times these publications have been cited by others. Although it is widely used in academia, many authors find its calculation confusing. There are websites such as Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science (WOS), and Vidwan that provide the h-index of an author. As this metrics is frequently used by recruiting agency and grant approving authority to see the output of researchers, the authors need to know in-depth about it. In this article, we describe both the manual calculation method of the h-index and the details of websites that provide an automated calculation. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the h-index and the factors that determine the h-index of an author. Overall, this article serves as a comprehensive guide for novice authors seeking to understand the h-index and its significance in academia.

The new Scopus CiteScore formula and the Journal Impact Factor: a look at top ranking journals and middle ranking journals in the Scopus categories of General Physics and Astronomy, Materials Science, General Medicine and Social Sciences

In June 2020 Elsevier announced that the CiteScore metric of journals underwent a change. This work examines the effect of these changes for 40 journals, chosen from the top five and middle five (ranked by CiteScore) journals in the subject areas of General Physics and Astronomy, Materials Science, Medicine, Social Sciences) and compares to the Journal Impact Factor. It is shown that in the data studied here, the new methodology is less susceptible to influence of the proportion of editorial material in a journal, but tends to favour journals in research fields that publish articles which get cited more quickly.

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

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.

Evaluation of the national research foundation-rated researchers’ output at a South African university

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to establish the research impact of the National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated researchers’ output at the North-West University (NWU), South Africa, from 2006 to 2017.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used bibliometrics and altmetrics methods to determine the production of research outputs and the impact of NWU’s NRF-rated researchers’ publications. Various tools including Google Scholar (GS), Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, ResearchGate (RG) and Mendeley were used to collect data. The citations in the three bibliographic databases were used as proxy for academic impact, while reads and readerships in RG and Mendeley were used to determine societal impact of the researchers. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to test the relationship between citations in the three bibliographic databases and reads and readerships in RG and Mendeley.

Findings

The main findings were that the majority of NWU’s NRF-rated researchers’ publications emanated from GS, followed by Scopus and then WoS. GS output also had more citations. There were 6,026 research outputs in RG which were read for 676,919 times and 5,850 in Mendeley with 142,621 readerships. Correlations between RG and all three bibliographic databases’ citations were scant. Strong relationships between the three bibliographic databases’ citations and Mendeley readerships were found.

Practical implications

Academic librarians who interact with researchers who would like to predict future academic impact of their documents can be advised to consider Mendeley readerships with some level of confidence compared to RG reads. These results point to the importance of constant self-evaluation by researchers to ensure that they have balanced profiles across the three main bibliographic databases that are also considered for ratings. These results point to the relevancy of GS to evaluate research beyond the academy.

Social implications

The fact that researchers are contributing research that seeks to improve the general welfare of the population (beyond the academy) is a positive sign as society look up to researchers and research to solve their socio-economic problems. Social media play an important role as they serve as indicators that indicators point to wider research impacts and wider access by many different groups of people including the members of society at large. They point to research that is accessible to not only researchers and those who have access to their research but also the society at large.

Originality/value

Although the practice of rating researchers is common in different research ecosystems, the researchers could not find any evidence of studies conducted using a combination of bibliometrics and altmetrics to asses rated researchers’ output. This study covers and compares social impact based on data obtained from two academic social media sites and three main bibliographic databases (GS, Scopus and WoS).

Publications in Integrative and Complementary Medicine: A Ten-Year Bibliometric Survey in the Field of ICM

Background

This article aims to analyze the research status of integrative complementary medicine (ICM) and features of highly cited papers in the field to provide reference of the future development of ICM.

Methods

Publications in the field of ICM from 2009 to 2018 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. The top 20 countries/territories, institutions, journals, keywords of highly cited and noncited papers, and characteristics of essential science indicator (ESI) papers, as well as open access (OA) and non-OA papers, were analyzed.

Results

Mainland China had the largest number of ICM publications. The top 20 journals published a total of 31667 papers in 2009–2018, which represented 92.9% of all publications. Keywords of highly cited and noncited papers point to different research directions. 48 ESI highly cited/hot papers were identified, most of which are related to phytochemistry. Furthermore, the average citation rate (percentage of publications that have been cited one or more times) of OA papers was lower than that of total papers and non-OA papers.

Conclusions

China leads in number of publications; however, publication quality in ICM field requires improvement. A few journals accounted for more than half of number of publications and citations, which are important for the development of ICM. Many of the keywords in ICM noncited publications pointed towards broad meaning that poorly reflect the exact research content. Most highly cited ICM studies focused on the identification and evaluation of plant active components. OA may not be an effective approach to increase paper citations in the field of ICM.

Resources for forwards citation searching for implementation studies in dementia care: A case study comparing Web of Science and Scopus

BACKGROUND

Forwards citation searching is a valuable method for finding relevant studies in reviews where concepts are not clearly defined. Scopus and Web of Science can both be used for forwards citation searching but there is little evidence comparing the resources for this purpose.

METHOD

104 source records relevant to a scoping review of implementation and dissemination strategies in dementia care were checked for inclusion on Web of Science and Scopus. The number of citing references was recorded. Where citing references appeared unique to one of the resources, they were checked for inclusion on the other resource to assess the performance of citation links.

RESULTS

1397 citing references were returned by Scopus and 1010 were returned by Web of Science. For the unique citing references returned by Web of Science (n = 52), 36 were subsequently found to be on Scopus but had failed to be picked up as citing a source record. Of the unique citing references returned by Scopus (n = 355), 83 were found to be on Web of Science but had failed to be picked up as citing a source record. 26 additional relevant records were identified for the review by forwards citation searching. All were found on Scopus; six would have been missed by searching Web of Science alone.

CONCLUSION

Citation searching using Scopus alone would have found all additional relevant studies for the review. Both Scopus and Web of Science failed to return all citing references from the source records, even where they were present on the database, indicating poor links between citations.

Are they publishing? A descriptive cross-sectional profile and bibliometric analysis of the journal publication productivity of Italian physiotherapists

Background

In a clinical science-based profession such as physiotherapy, research is mandatory to update knowledge and to provide cost-effective, high quality treatments. This study aimed to provide point prevalence of Italian physiotherapists who are academics, holding a PhD degree, or being authors of scientific papers. The scientific journal productivity of physiotherapists was also thoroughly analyzed.

Methods

A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on all Italian physiotherapists. Academics, postdoctoral research fellows, and PhD graduates were identified by searching the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), Italian Society of Physiotherapy, and university websites. Then, authors of articles indexed in Scopus were searched. The following data were extracted: type of affiliation, authorship order, H-index, number of publications and citations, name of journals, year of publication, and journal’s Impact Factor.

Results

The prevalence of academics, physiotherapists holding a PhD, or being author was 0.01%, 0.05%, and 0.56%, respectively. We identified 1083 papers co-authored by Italian physiotherapists, and their number has progressively increased over the years (p < 0.001). There was a significant difference between researchers and clinicians in both publication productivity (p < 0.01), citations (p < 0.01), and H-Index (p = 0.05). Articles were published in 359 different journals, receiving a total of 13,373 citations.

Conclusions

Despite the low prevalence of faculty members and the reduced availability of PhD programs in Italy (forcing some students to study abroad), the quantity and quality of journal productivity is growing fast, and an increasing number of physiotherapists are involved in research activities.

Analysis of ten years of publishing in Pharmacy Practice

Objective:

The aim of this study is to characterize the patterns and trends in the editorial process and features of the first decade of Pharmacy Practice, with the final goal of initiating a benchmarking process to enhance the quality of the journal.

Methods:

Metadata of all of the articles published from 2006 issue #3 to 2016 issue #2 were extracted from PubMed and complemented by a manual data extraction process on the full-text articles. Citations of these articles were retrieved from Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and Google Scholar on August 15, 2016. The references from all of the articles published by Pharmacy Practice in 2015 were also extracted. International collaboration was explored with a network analysis.

Results:

A total of 40 issues were published in this timespan, including 349 articles, 91.1% of which were original research articles. The number of citations received by these articles varies from 809, as reported by the WOS, to the 1162 reported by Scopus and the 2610 reported by Google Scholar. The journals cited by Pharmacy Practice are mainly pharmacy journals, including Pharm Pract (Granada), Int J Clin Pharm, Am J Health-Syst Pharm, Am J Pharm Educ, and Ann Pharmacother. Only 17.3% of the articles involved international collaboration. Delays in the editorial process increased in 2013, mainly due to an increase in acceptance delay (mean=138 days).

Conclusion:

Pharmacy Practice has improved its visibility and impact over the past decade, especially after 2014, when the journal became indexed in PubMed Central. The editorial process duration is one of the weaknesses that should be tackled. Further studies should investigate if the low international collaboration rate is common across other pharmacy journals.