Library Guides: Database Comparisons: Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science (2024)

FAQs

Which database is better, Web of Science or Scopus? ›

Scopus covers more than 42,000 peer-reviewed journals from all over the world, while Web of Science covers more than 32,000 journals from 80 countries. Both have comprehensive citation databases that allow researchers to track the impact of their work through citation counts and h-index.

Coverage of journals published outside the U.S. – Google Scholar and Scopus do a lot more of this than Web of Science. Non-English language publications – Google Scholar will find more of these. Interdisciplinary field coverage – Scopus and Google Scholar cover more journals in fields that span multiple disciplines.

Peer Review

Most journals in Web of Science and Scopus are peer-reviewed and journal's quality is determined through various metrics. Google scholar indexing is more flexible. Search results can include predatory publishers and not be peer-reviewed.

Most importantly, Google Scholar does not have an option for limiting results to scholarly, peer-reviewed materials. Virtually all library databases do. Library databases typically have a variety of options for refining search results.

Coverage: Google Scholar has a larger coverage than Scopus. It indexes a wider range of literature, including conference papers, theses, dissertations, and preprints, while Scopus mainly focuses on peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, and books.

Unsurpassed quality control: While both platforms offer high-quality articles, Web of Science particularly emphasizes the natural sciences with its elevated standards for publication verification.

However, GS tends to have more data coverage, and thus, citation counts tend to be higher in GS. As a researcher and scholarly author, you can get a better idea of your total citation counts by cleaning up your GS profile and managing your list of publications and co-authors.

The quality and reliability of the sources indexed by Google Scholar can vary widely, and not all sources that appear in search results are peer-reviewed or credible. Therefore, it is important to carefully evaluate the sources you find, especially if you plan to use them in your own research.

Google Scholar is a database, but not what is intended for the assignment. One of the purposes of the assignment is to learn to use the information that is available only through the Library.

Google Scholar includes content that is not in library databases, such as grey literature and content from university repositories. It also includes content that is in library databases, but not all of that content (though there is some overlap). The options for narrowing your search in Google Scholar are limited.

Why does Scopus show less citations than Google Scholar? ›

H-index provided by Scopus

This database excludes citations from unverified publishers, self-citations, and duplicate citations. This means that Scopus usually has less coverage and citation count compared to google scholar while it has higher quality and accuracy of citation data.

Disadvantages of Using Google Scholar

It's coverage is wide-ranging but not comprehensive. It can be a good research source but should not be the only source you use. It's full- text versions of many items indexed are not available for free through on the web; however, many are accessible through the Library website.

Even if Google Scholar was to allow users to browse beyond the first 1000 search results, its overall recall would still be too low to locate all included references to support the systematic review.

Our results suggest that PubMed, using the Clinical Queries search filter, is more precise (180 times greater for all citations and 154 times greater for full-text citations) than Google Scholar for finding valid studies included in the reference lists of related Cochrane reviews.

Google Scholar is generally considered a reliable source for academic research. It indexes scholarly articles, theses, books, conference papers, and other academic materials from various disciplines.

Web of Science has a greater depth of scientific citations, while Scopus focuses on more modern sources, because its database was founded later and is “younger”.

Scopus is a subscription database from Elsevier that is an alternative to Thompson's Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports. This resource offers a larger range of journals than Web of Science but, like Web of Science, also has a science focus over the humanities and social sciences.

Clarivate Analytics's Web of Science (WoS) is the world's leading scientific citation search and analytical information platform. It is used as both a research tool supporting a broad array of scientific tasks across diverse knowledge domains as well as a dataset for large-scale data-intensive studies.