Scopus and Web of Science databases

Today, various scientometric indicators are often used to evaluate the performance of research teams and scientists. Most of them are based on the citation count of scientific works: large bibliographic databases index publications (articles, books and other types of publications) and count the number of references to these works. Today we will talk about the two most famous bases that are familiar to any scientist. These are the Scopus and Web Of Science databases.

Scopus

Scopus is one of the largest bibliographic databases in the world that allows you to track the citation of articles that have been published in scientific journals.

Scopus indexes about 21,000 scientific publications in various fields of science submitted by 500 publishers. Among the materials that are in this database are not only scientific journals, but also the proceedings of conferences, as well as publications of books published in series. Scopus is owned by Elsevier Corporation. The database is available to users through the web interface, subject to a pre-paid subscription.

Scopus is known all over the world and as an abstract database covering abstracts and journals in various disciplines. The number of abstracts includes more than 28 million articles published in 15 thousand scientific journals. Of this amount, more than 52% belongs to European journals, which are published in 4 thousand publishing houses. There are more than 345 Russian journals published in English, not counting journals translated partially and in small volumes and included in other publications.

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Elsevier Corporation has set a goal for Scopus to become the most comprehensive resource for finding scientific information in the near future. Currently, over 85% of all publications are submitted to Scopus electronically or taken from the publication’s website. The Scopus database indexes publications not only in English, but also in other languages ​​of the world, subject to one condition: the published version of the abstract must be in English.

If an article published in a journal from the current Scopus List is not indexed, then most likely this happened for two reasons:

• or incorrect author information,
• or incorrectly formatted bibliographic lists and violated citation rules.

All scientific articles published after 1996 are indexed with bibliographic lists published with the articles. Citation counting is done automatically based on the analysis of these lists. Special mention should be made of the author’s profile. The profile indicates the name of the author, all places of his work, including the last one, the number of publications broken down by years, areas of scientific research, links to co-authors, h-index, total number of citations.

Institutional profiles are also created in this database if employees have at least one Scopus publication that specifies:

• address of the institution and the number of its authors-employees,
• number of their publications,
• list of publications in which works are published and their distribution by topic.

Scopus has a number of advantages for users over other databases:

• Effective topic search from one platform,
• the ability to see all the information about scientific developments on the research topic at a single visit,
• the ability to obtain data on all authors who have published works in this field of scientific research,
• retrieve all data on organizations involved in research in this area
• getting information on all the journals of interest.

Web Of Science

Web of Science (abbreviated WoS, formerly ISI Web of Knowledge) is a search platform that brings together abstract databases of publications and patents in scientific periodicals, including bases for mutual citation of publications. Thomson Reuters has been developing this citation index since April 2008. WoS presents information on all areas of knowledge by indexing:

• more than 12,000 magazines
• 120,000 different conference materials
• over 4,400 sites

The vast majority of tasks in evaluating the effectiveness of scientific research in the world are solved on the basis of WoS data. Although the Scopus database is growing faster than the WoS database, the latter wins in terms of the depth and volume of its archive, the careful selection of journals and, as a result, the greater authority of journal indexes.

WoS has all the necessary elements of bibliographic content, such as data about the author, title of document and source, abstracts of authors, and others. Thus, in the WoS database, you can easily find who, when and where cited a given author and his publication.

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You can determine the citation index of a scientist, organization or research team using the main elements of this database:

• Science Citation Index Expanded (base on natural sciences, archive since 1945), indexes more than 5866 journals;
• Social Science Citation Index (social science database, archive since 1956), indexes over 1747 journals;
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index (base of arts and humanities publications, archive since 1975), indexes over 1300 journals.
• Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Science (base of materials of conferences on natural and technical sciences with the depth of the archive – 1990);
• Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Social Science & Humanities
• Book Citation Index – Science – this index covers books and monographs published in series and without, but must include full lists of references and the author’s profile. The Science Index covers natural and technical sciences, as well as medicine, agriculture and computing.
• Book Citation Index – Social Science & Humanities covers monographs in the social sciences and humanities. Both indexes currently contain book series in the form of electronic and printed texts published after 2005.

Scopus or Web Of Science: where is the best place to publish an article?

Scopus and WoS, being the largest databases of scientific periodicals, complement each other. If WoS gravitates towards traditional sources, especially from the US, then Scopus gives a broader view of science. While WoS provides deeper citations for some sources, Scopus makes up for this with a wider range of sources. In addition, Scopus adds archives and Articles-in-Press of leading publishers and updates the data in the database more often.

Scopus is not only a younger company, but also more energetic. For example, Scopus already has 1/3 more content than Web of Science. The Scopus database contains over 90% of Web of Science content. And most importantly, Scopus has implemented a transparent and independent source selection system. In addition, the database is much easier to use both in order to find the information you need, and in order to place a scientific article in the Scopus journal.

The WoS resource mainly indexes works in the natural and exact sciences, as well as in the social sciences, and there are very few journals in the humanities in the database, so specialists in the humanities should choose a journal to publish from the Scopus database.

When we think about how to get into WoS, we should also be aware of the shortcomings of this database for Russian authors, which include the lack of accounting for links to original Russian articles in the presence of translated versions. This led to a decrease in the impact factors of domestic journals and citation rates of Russian scientists.

There is another common problem for domestic journals when entering the international level. Our editors are not able to provide complete bibliographic data (either due to laziness or due to “circumstances”) and therefore articles are often either incorrectly indexed or not indexed at all. This is aggravated by the fact that the databases are not able to determine the area of ​​knowledge of a particular article, so an article on mathematics published in a multidisciplinary publication is at the same time an article on biology, economics, and veterinary science.

In conclusion, we can say that the choice between one or another citation index is dictated by the tasks that researchers face. To achieve the goals of a retrospective analytical review, Web of Science, which has a deeper archive, is more suitable. If there are tasks of a long-term nature related to forecasting, then it is better to resort to the Scopus database, which has a wider coverage of modern scientific sources. The question of where it is better to publish an article should be decided from the point of view of scientific interests and the availability of opportunities for a faster and more complete selection of the necessary literature in this field of research.

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Updated Tue, 01/05/2021 – 11:01