SCOPUS Vs. Web of Science SCOPUS Vs. Web of Science

Introduction

Once you have retrieved articles through a global search, you will need to consult one of the two major search engines devoted to academic and scientific articles. Both SCOPUS and Web of Science are very large, subscription-based databases that allow users to search for indexed contents. Each database allows extensive searches into various domains of science and academic literature. The databases include impact, productivity, and citation algorithms that measure an article’s or author’s impact on their respective fields. Both databases have differences in metrics calculations, which should be taken into consideration (Table 1). Both systems rely on quartiles (Q) which are bands of serial titles that have been grouped together because they occupy a similar position within their subject categories. The four quartiles are denominated Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. Percentiles indicate the relative standing of a serial title in its subject field. Each subject field is divided into 100 equal-sized percentiles based on the number of serial titles, and a serial title is assigned to a percentile based on its CiteScore.

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Dating back to 1900, Web of Science (abbreviated as WoS), formerly the Web of Knowledge, is an online citation index service produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and now maintained by Clarivate Analytics. In 2014, Clarivate declared that Web of Science’s databases host over 50,000 scholarly books, 12,000 journals, and 160,000 conference proceedings. Web of Science specializes in the sciences, social sciences, art, and humanities. Annually, Clarivate publishes The Journal Citation Reports, which provide analytic information on the academic performance of its journals through Journal Impact Factors (JIF), Eigenfactor and Citation indexes. JIF is an important measure for the performance of a journal. It is calculated via the equation below:

"#$%& '($%$(#)* () +%', -+%. .+'+(/+0 1#. $,+ ($+2* 345&(*,+0 () $,+ 3%*$ $6# -+%.* JIF = "#$%& )425+. #1 '($%5&+ ($+2* 3.#04'+0 () $,+ 3%*$ $6# -+%.*

For example, if a journal reports that JIF = 5 in 2019, this means that, on average, each article produced by the journal in 2017 and 2018 received five citations.

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SCOPUS, on the other hand, is a database of peer-reviewed literature launched in 2004 by Elsevier. SCOPUS partners with over 5000 publishers, hosts over 22,000 serial titles, 150,000 books and has 1.4 billion cited references dating back to 1966. A simple comparison shows that the database of SCOPUS is much more extensive than that of WoS. All SCOPUS journals are reviewed annually to measure quality standards. There are three quality indexes: The Cite-Score, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP). SCOPUS also provides citations and indexes for conference proceedings.

CiteScore plays the same role as that of JIF but with one difference. The former evaluates a journal’s performance over the past three years, while the latter measures the impact of a journal over the past two years. For that reason, these two evaluation parameters are not directly comparable. Nonetheless, they show the importance and impact of the journal in its field.

"#$%& '($%$(#)* () +%', -+%. .+'+(/+0 1#. $,+ ($+2* 345&(*,+0 () $,+ 3%*$ $,.++ -+%.* CiteScore = "#$%& )425+. #1 0#'42+)$* 3.#04'+0 () $,+ 3%*$ $,.++ -+%.*

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Searching Through Web of Science

To get the most out of searching through the Web of Science database, consider creating an account so that you can save searches and citations for consulting later. The Tecnologico de Monterrey provides faculty and students with access to the Web of Science through the institutional login. The next step in accessing the Web of Science is through the library’s website. As you take this step, consider using Firefox or Chrome as your web browser, because the library site is geared towards these search engines.

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Go to Biblioteca Tec by typing (https://biblioteca.tec.mx/inicio) into your browser bar. This will lead you to the BiblioXplora main page (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Biblioteca search bar

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Click on the “Buscar” drop-down menu (Figure 2) and click the “Bases de Datos” tab (Figure 3).

Figure 2: Buscar tab Figure 3: Web of Science through Biblioteca Tec

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In the search box, type, “Web of Science.” It is important to remember that this page is not typically accessible if you are outside an institution that has a subscription to the Web of Science. Click “Ir” (“Go”) next to the search box (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Accessing Web of Science through Biblioteca Tec

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This will lead you to your Tec de Monterrey login page (Figure 5). On this page, enter your Tec credentials, such as your password and pin. Click “Enviar.”

Figure 5: Biblioteca login

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By doing so, you are directly guided to the Web of Science website (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Web of Science search

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Click the “Journal Citation Reports” tab at the top of the webpage (Figure 7). Type the journal name into the Web of Science search bar. Click the “search” button. A new tab will open with a list of matching journals.

Figure 7: Journal citation reports, Web of Science 11 of 30 SCOPUS Vs. Web of Science

However, if you do not find the journal in your first attempt, do not get disappointed. Sometimes the titles of the journals are slightly different in the databases. For example, Biosensors and Bioelectronics is one of the most influential journals in the field of biosensing. If you search "Biosensors and Bioelectronics," no results appear on the Web of Science platform. However, if you search “Biosensors & Bioelectronics,” the journal can be found.

Worked Example – Web of Science

Consider the example of searching the journal titled, Computers and Human Behavior. Follow the previous steps and log in through the Tec login at Biblioteca and reach the Web of Science search page.

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In the search term box, type in the name of the journal (Figure 8).

Figure 8: “Computers in Human Behavior” entered into the Web of Science search bar 13 of 30 SCOPUS Vs. Web of Science

The results should take you to the Web of Science metrics page for the journal as can be seen in Figure 9. This page provides a range of information including the ISSN, the publishing country the company, and the year journal was established.

Figure 9: Results for Computers in Human Behavior from Web of Science metrics page.

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As you scroll down, the first graphic shows the JIF as an absolute value and the percentile score over the last 5 years. Computers in Human Behavior had a JIF of 3.536 in 2017 (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Journal Impact Factor for Computers in Human Behavior, Web of Science 15 of 30 SCOPUS Vs. Web of Science

Scrolling down will show how the JIF is calculated. The JIF is made by aggregating the number of citations made in the previous year (2017 in the above example) to journals in the two years prior (2015 and 2016) and dividing that by the number of documents published in the journal for those two prior years. (Figure 11).

Figure 11: Method for JIF calculation, Web of Science 16 of 30 SCOPUS Vs. Web of Science

The JIF has a great significance in the Web of Science indexing. The absolute values of the JIFs are reported in percentiles to show how a particular journal performs in comparison to other journals in the same academic field. Computers in Human Behavior is ranked in the 92nd percentile for Experimental Psychology and in the 89th percentile for Multidisciplinary Psychology.

Interpreting Data

JIF is the Web of Science method for organizing journal quartiles or ranks. Quartiles divide the entire spectrum of ranks into four parts. Quartile 1 (Q1) represents journals ranked from 100 to 75, for example. For reference, Q1 = 100–76th, Q2 = 75–51st, Q3 = 50–26th, and Q4 = 25–1st.

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Algorithm indexes show the most cited articles from the journals. You can see the most cited articles and distributions of citations by selecting the “All Years” tab (Figure 12). This provides a detailed table of various indicators, including total cites, journal impact factor, the 5-year impact factor, and the Eigenfactor score. Figure 12: Detailed indicators, Computers in Human Behavior

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When researching emerging fields, it is crucial to find articles from journals that are growing in influence. The most important data here are the Total Cites, Journal Impact Factor, the 5-year impact factor, and the Eigenfactor Score. Total Cites shows the number of citations given to journals published in that year. This data shows that Computers in Human Behavior has had a positive trend and has been consistently improving, as also shown in Figure 10.

Check to see if your chosen article is from either a Q1 or a Q2 journal. If the journal is ranked Q1 or Q2, keep the article for more consideration. If the journal is Q3 or Q4, consider seriously whether the citation has enough relevance and timeliness to include the article in your final literature review. Use this quartile methodology for all your article citations gathered from the Global Search section.

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Searching Through Scopus

To get the most out of searching through the Scopus database, consider creating an account so that you can save searches and citations for consulting later (Figure 13).

Figure 13: SCOPUS login

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You can access the SCOPUS database directly without an institutional login. Enter the address, www.scopus.com into your web browser. Click on the “Sources” tab at the top of the screen. Make sure the “Title” tab is selected from the dropdown box (Figure 14), then type the name of Figure 14: Title label on the dropdown box the journal into the search bar and click “Find Sources” (Figure 15). This will direct you to a page with the listings of journals related to that search category. Results will be issued in descending order Figure 15: Computers in Human Behavior according to cite score. in SCOPUS sources

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Click the journal link. This will open information about the journal (Figures 16 and 17).

Figure 16: One result for Computers in Human Behavior

Figure 17: Journal link results, SCOPUS

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Interpreting Data

The CiteScore judges the journal’s influence by dividing the current year citations by the number of documents published over a 3-year period (Figure 18).

Figure 18: CiteScore in SCOPUS

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Scopus ranks the journals on absolute values against other journals in the same field. Click the CiteScore rank & trend (Figure 19). If a journal is listed under multiple fields, it is given a different rank for each field in which it is listed.

Figure 19: CiteScore rank and trend dropdown tab

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As an example, in 2017, the journal, Computers in Human Behavior, ranked 5 out of 249 in Miscellaneous Arts and Humanities (Figure 20), 11 out of 189 in General Psychology, and 7 out of 87 in Computer Science. These scores reflect percentile scores of 97, 94, and 92, respectively.

Figure 20: The example journal’s rank in different fields

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The CiteScore also reports the quartile percentages. As stated above, in the Web of Science section, the quartiles are as follows: Q1 = 100 -76, Q2 = 75 – 51, Q3 = 50 – 26, Q-4 = 25 -1. In our example, Computers in Human Behavior, ranked in the 95th and 92nd percentiles, is a Q1 journal in both categories (Figure 21). Recalling that the Web of Science and SCOPUS use different metrics to calculate percentiles, it is advisable to check both the Web of Science and SCOPUS to get a perspective of rankings in both major databases.

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To look for longer trends in the performance of a journal, click the “CiteScore rank & trend” again (Figure 20). The graph on the right side of this page shows the trend of the journal over the past 5 years. This is of crucial importance to monitor the past performance of the journal and to make sure the journal has had a continuous positive growth.

Figure 21: Ranking of the journal

27 of 30 SCOPUS Vs. Web of Science In addition to CiteScore rank, the source normalized impact per paper (SNIP) metric measures the actual citations per paper against the expected citations in the given scientific field. As expected, a larger SJR and SNIP represents a stronger journal (Figure 22).

Figure 22: SJR and SNIP scores (middle and lower right) for Computers in Human Behavior

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In addition to the CiteScore metric and the CiteScore Rank &Trend, the SCImago is a journal ranking metric calculated by weighting the CiteScore by the ranking journal importance providing the citations. The algorithm is based on network analysis. The SCImago journal rank helps to position a journal within a complex web of expected citations. Because of the different algorithms involved, it is difficult to compare one metric to another. The researcher should be fully attuned to the subtle differences between the Web of Science and the SCOPUS ranking systems. In any case, TEC indicates SCOPUS as the preferred platform its authors should use, not only for journal publications but also for publishing conference proceedings. To learn about conference evaluation in the SCOPUS platform, study our next handout to learn all you may need to know to identify strong conferences.

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