Evaluation based on scientific publishing: Scopus

Scopus

Scopus content overview

Scopus video (14,35 min). Look and learn how to:

  • Find relevant content
  • Analyze search results
  • View and download, citation information, pdfs, and abstracts
  • Use research assessment tools (such as author evaluator and citation tracker)
  • Analyze journal performance

Search possibilities of Scopus

Scopus affiliation identifier - read more

The Affiliation Details page provides information about affiliations that have more than one document matched to them in Scopus. Affiliation details include the affiliation ID, name variations, address information, research areas, documents published, sources the organization has published in, and collaborating affiliations.
Source: Scopus (Elsevier), 29.8.2011.

Evaluation tools of Scopus

Citation overview

Citations of Cell on the Citation Overview page.
Source: Scopus (Elsevier),  2.9.2009.

H-index
Read more about H-index

H-index is available on author details-page. 
Source:  Scopus (Elsevier),  2.9.2009.
 

The h-graph where the h-index is the incision point of the two lines. The straight line, when x=y, represents the h line where the number of citations equals the number of articles and the curved line plots the author's articles in descending citation order.
Source: Scopus (Elsevier), 7.8.2014

Researcher profile in Scopus

Scopus automatically creates researcher profiles with author identifiers. Researchers can request for corrections, if needed. For example if:

  • your publications are listed under several author identifiers, you can ask Scopus to merge the identifiers ("Request to merge authors")
  • there is false or missing information in your profile, you can ask Scopus to correct or complete your researcher profile information ("Request author detail corrections")
  • there are publications that are not written by you listed under your researcher profile, you can ask Scopus to remove them ("Request to remove documents from author")

Requests can be made directly in Scopus or through a separate Author Feedback Wizard .

Comparison of Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar

The most important multidisciplinary databases containing citation information are Web of Sciece (WoS) by Thomson Reuters and Scopus by Elsevier.  Citations can also be retrieved from Google Scholar (GS) keeping in mind the limitations of the database. GS contains a lot of non-scientific citations. The number of citations can vary a lot between Web of Science, Scopus and especially GS.

In addition, there are some field specific databases which contain reference information such as Chemical Abstracts (SciFinder), CiteSeerX and MathScinet.

Table below: Comparison of WoS, Scopus and GS

Feature

Web of Science (more information)

Scopus (more information)

Google Scholar (more information)

Availability

subscription based

subscription based

freely accessible

Number of journals

 22 000 peer-reviewed journals

23 500 peer-reviewed journals

information is not publically available

Other contents

conference proceedings, books

conference proceedings, professional magazines, patents and book series

books, pre-prints, theses and dissertations, and webpages

Main disiplines

Natural Sciences, Technology, Social Sciences, Fine Arts and Humanities

Physics, Technology, Health Sciences, Bio sciences, Fine Arts and Humanities,
Social Sciences

information is not publically availabale

Time span

from 1900 (Science), 1956 (Social Sciences) and 1975 (Arts and Humanities), accessble

records back to 1788

 

information is not publically availabale

Up-dates

weekly

daily

information not publically available, but more or less monthly

Collection policy

public

public

information not publically available, contracts with most significant publishing houses

Citation analysis

Citation Report -tool

View citation overview -tool

search report with a 'Cited by' link, giving  all pulications which cite the publication in question

Time span of citation information

from 1900  (Science), from 1956 (Social Sciences) and from 1975 (Arts and Humanities); citation statistics available at Oulu University Library for the whole period, but the referencing articles only available from 1975

cited references dating back to 1970

information is not publically availabale

Web of Science Scopus Google Scholar
Indicators Journal Citation Reports:
- Article Influence (AI)
- Eigenfactor
- H-index
- Immediacy Index
- Impact Factor (IF)
- H-index
- Raw impact per publication (RIP)
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
Source normalized impact per paper (SNIP)
Field-Weighted Citation Impact 
- H-index
Tools - Journal Citation Reports
- Eigenfactor
- ScienceWatch 
- Scival
- SCImago Journal and Country Rank
- CWTS Journal Indicators
- Publish or Perish 
University rankings

- Shanghai Ranking eli Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)
- National Taiwan University Ranking (NTU)
- University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP)
- U.S. News & World Report's Best Global Universities Rankings
- CWTS Leiden Ranking
- U-Multirank

- Review of the state of scientific research in Finland by The Academy of Finland

- Times Higher Education World University Rankings
- QS World University Rankings
- Webometrics
- Webometrics
Researcher profile ResearcherID Scopus Author Identifier
- also Scopus Affiliation Identifier
Google Scholar Profile


From the perspective of citation analysis, what matters most, is the number of records enhanced by cited references and the total number of cited references included in the database used. In addition to contributing citation data, citation enhanced databases may serve as a platform providing the analytical tools for bibliometric analysis. Both of these contributions are beset with several methodological and technical difficulties, including limited coverage of the scholarly literature, inconsistent and inaccurate data, and limited facilities for browsing, searching and analyzing data. Most of these difficulties arise because bibliographic databases are primarily designed for information retrieval and bibliometric analysis represents only a secondary use of the systems.

Both Web of Science and Scopus have master records with cited references, and they show the bibliographic and reference details of the citing records. Web of Science is available in many different versions regarding years of coverage and citation indexes included in the subscription of the user's institution. Web of Science always includes all the cited references for every record created, irrespective of the publication year and subscription. Scopus includes cited reference information for records of papers published from 1970 onward.

Google Scholar's coverage is unknown and might be uneven across different fields of science. Additonally, older publications are poorly covered. To continue non-scholarly literature and citations are included.