A bibliometric analysis of pharmacology and pharmacy journals : Scopus versus Web of Science

Gorraiz, Juan and Schloegl, Christian A bibliometric analysis of pharmacology and pharmacy journals : Scopus versus Web of Science. Journal of Information Science, 2007. (In Press) [Journal article (Paginated)]

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English abstract

Our study aims at examining the suitability of Scopus for bibliometric analyses in comparison with the Web of Science (WOS). In particular we want to explore if the outcome of bibliometric analyses differs between Scopus and WOS and, if yes, in which aspects. In doing so we focus on the following questions: To which extent are high impact JCR (Journal Citation Reports) journals covered by Scopus? Are the impact factor and the immediacy index usually lower for a JCR journal than the corresponding indicators computed in Scopus? Are there high impact journals not covered by the JCR? And, finally, how reliable are the data in these two databases? Since journal indicators like the impact factor and the immediacy index differ among disciplines, we analysed only journals from the subject pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences. Focussing on one subject category offers furthermore the possibility to go into more detail when comparing the databases. The findings of our study can be summarized as follows: • Each top-100 JCR pharmacy journal was covered by Scopus. • The impact factor was higher for 82 and the immediacy index greater for 78 journals in Scopus in 2005. Pharmacy journals with a high impact factor in the JCR usually have a high impact factor in Scopus. • Several high but no top-impact journal could be identified in Scopus which were not reported in JCR. • The two databases differed in the number of articles within a tolerable margin of deviation for most journals.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: bibliometric analysis; Scopus; Web of Science; Journal Citation Reports; impact factor; immediacy index; comparison of databases; data reliability
Subjects: H. Information sources, supports, channels. > HL. Databases and database Networking.
B. Information use and sociology of information > BB. Bibliometric methods
Depositing user: Christian Schloegl
Date deposited: 09 Nov 2007
Last modified: 02 Oct 2014 12:09
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/10673

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