The two most commonly used sources for citation analysis are Google Scholar and Web of Science. Look at the following break-down to help make your choice.
|
Subject Focus |
Medical, Scientific, Technical, Business, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities |
Science, Technology, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities |
|
Includes |
Date Range :whatever is available on free web Selections from PubMed, IEEE, American Institute of Physics, proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature.com, American Medical Association and other medicine journals, Ingenta, SpringerLink,Wiley Interscience, Cambridge journals, Taylor and Francis, Sage Publications, Blackwell-Synergy, OCLC First Search and others Open access journals and pre-prints Online dissertations and theses Book information Conference papers |
Web of Science Core Collection (Science & Social Sciences citation indexes, 1900-present; Arts & Humanities, 1975-present; Conference Proceedings Citation Index, 1990-present; Book Citation Index, 1990-present; Current Chemical Reactions, Index Chemicus); BIOSIS Citation Index; BIOSIS Previews, 1926-present; Current Contents Connect; Data Citation Index; Derwent Innovations Index; MEDLINE; SciELO Citation Index; Zoological Record. Journal Citation Reports and Essential Science Indicators are also available |
|
Journals Indexed |
Unknown |
Over 10,000 |
|
Updating |
Monthly |
Weekly |
|
Pros |
Provides a more comprehensive picture of scholarly impact as it indexes non-traditional sources not covered by WOS and Scopus Includes peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities, and other scholarly organizations Better coverage of newer materials than both WOS and Scopus International and multi-lingual coverage |
Deeper back-files especially for Science Journals While controversial, its journal citation reports, impact factors, and h-index are most widely used Offers citation mapping for visual presentation Does not include technical reports, theses and dissertations, conference proceedings, and books |
|
Cons |
Limited search features Inflated citation counts due to inclusion of non-scholarly sources such as promotional pages, table of contents pages, course readings lists etc. Weeding irrelevant hits is time consuming Difficult to export citations No way to determine what sources, and time spans are covered. Limited to what is available on the Web |
Can lead to low citation counts due to errors in citations provided by authors, and different citation styles used by journals leading to poor indexing More difficult to use Coverage in the sciences is more through then in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. |
Information adapted from the guides available from the University of Michigan Library and the University of Connecticut Library.
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