Bigger Isn't Always Better: Dimensions Indexes More Journals, But Scopus Still Wins on Citations for Some Countries

Overview

Paper Summary › Explain Like I'm Five › Conflicts of Interest › Identified Limitations › Rating Explanation › Good to know › Topic Hierarchy › File Information ›

Paper Summary

Paperzilla title

Web of Science has the most selective journal coverage, while Dimensions is the most exhaustive. While generally Dimensions has higher research output, Scopus shows higher citation counts for China and India, likely due to subject area coverage differences across the databases.

Explain Like I'm Five

Scientists found that different online libraries of science papers collect different things. One library is very picky, only choosing the best papers, while another tries to collect almost every paper ever. Even though the "everything" library has more papers, a different library had more famous papers from China and India.

Possible Conflicts of Interest

None identified

Identified Limitations

Conservative Matching Procedure

The study uses a conservative matching procedure for journals, which might lead to some journals being classified as unique when they are essentially the same but spelled differently. This could slightly underestimate the overlap between databases.

Limited Scope (Journals Only)

The analysis focuses solely on journal coverage and does not consider other publication types like books and conference proceedings. This limits the scope of the comparison and might not fully capture the differences in coverage between databases.

Broad Subject Area Mapping

While the study uses article-level subject classification for Dimensions, it maps Scopus and Web of Science subject areas to broad categories, potentially masking finer-grained differences in subject coverage.

Exclusion of ESCI

The Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) is not included in the analysis for Web of Science, potentially underestimating its coverage, especially for newer or less established journals.

Rating Explanation

This is a solid comparative analysis of journal coverage across three major databases. The methodology is sound and the findings are useful for researchers. The limitations, while present, don't significantly detract from the value of the analysis. The comparison offers a valuable update on previous research and provides new insights into the coverage of Dimensions.

Good to know

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Topic Hierarchy

Domain: Social Sciences

Field: Decision Sciences

Subfield: Information Systems and Management

File Information

Original Title: The Journal Coverage of Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions: A Comparative Analysis

Uploaded: July 14, 2025 at 05:11 PM

Privacy: Public