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Assessing the publication impact using citation data from both Scopus and WoS databases: an approach validated in 15 research fields

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Abstract

In a recent paper (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03386-9) we proposed a model to estimate the citations of an article in a database (Scopus/Web of Science) in which it is not indexed using the percentile rank of the database (Web of Science/Scopus) in which it is indexed. In this study we supplement the previous work with three advances: (1) by using 15 different research fields, corresponding to over 1 million papers, since we previously used only four fields; (2) by measuring the agreement between the percentile ranks in both databases using Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient, since this coefficient has not been used previously to measure this agreement, but as a test with a sample of 15,400 papers to compare the actual and estimated number of citations; and (3) by using a robust data cleaning procedure. The results revealed a substantial concordance between percentile ranks of papers indexed in these two databases in all the research fields studied, and that this concordance is even stronger for high percentile values. This level of concordance suggests that we can consider the percentile of a paper in a database in which it is not indexed as being equal to the percentile of this paper in a database in which it is indexed. In other words, we increased the reliability of our previous conclusions that the percentile rank can be used as a citation database-normalization. The results of this study contribute to improve the use of citation counts in bibliometric studies, and to calculate research indicators when we need to use both bibliographic databases.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of ERDF—European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation—COMPETE 2020 Programme and the Portuguese funding agency, FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031821. We would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nuclear Physics and High Energies, Rio de Janeiro State University, Rio de Janeiro, 20550-900, Brazil

    Gerson Pech

  2. LIAAD/INESC TEC, University of Porto, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    Catarina Delgado

  3. Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, 4200-464, Porto, Portugal

    Catarina Delgado

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  1. Gerson Pech
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  2. Catarina Delgado
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Correspondence to Gerson Pech.

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Pech, G., Delgado, C. Assessing the publication impact using citation data from both Scopus and WoS databases: an approach validated in 15 research fields. Scientometrics 125, 909–924 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03660-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03660-w

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