Comparing alternatives to the Web of Science for coverage of the social sciences’ literature |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Library and Information Science, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea;2. Department of Information and Library Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA;1. Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK;2. Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen N, Denmark;3. Neuroscience IMED, MedImmune Limited, Granta Park, Cambridge, UK;1. Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science (Ministry of Education), School of Geographic Sciences, Shanghai Key Laboratory for Urban Ecological Process and Eco-restoration, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, PR China;2. School of Design, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China;3. Department of Information Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, PR China;1. Thomson Reuters, Barcelona, Spain;2. Universidad de Granada, Spain |
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| Abstract: | The Web of Science is no longer the only database which offers citation indexing of the social sciences. Scopus, CSA Illumina and Google Scholar are new entrants in this market. The holdings and citation records of these four databases were assessed against two sets of data one drawn from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and the other from the International bibliography of the Social Sciences. Initially, CSA Illumina's coverage at journal title level appeared to be the most comprehensive. But when recall and average citation count was tested at article level and rankings extrapolated by submission frequency to individual journal titles, Scopus was ranked first. When issues of functionality, the quality of record processing and depth of coverage are taken into account, Scopus and Web of Science have a significant advantage over the other two databases. From this analysis, Scopus offers the best coverage from amongst these databases and could be used as an alternative to the Web of Science as a tool to evaluate the research impact in the social sciences. |
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