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

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 - UKM

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Department of Engineering Design and Manufacture, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya; Research Support Unit, Centre of Research Services, Institute of Research Management and Monitoring (IPPP), University of Malaya

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
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Date posted: April 29, 2013 ; Last revised: May 9, 2013

Suggested Citation

Aghaei Chadegani, Arezoo, Salehi, Hadi, Yunus, Melor Md, Farhadi, Hadi, Fooladi, Masood, Farhadi, Maryam and Ale Ebrahim, Nader, A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science and Scopus Databases (April 7, 2013). Asian Social Science, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 18-26, April 27, 2013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2257540

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