Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar citation rates: a case study of medical physics and biomedical engineering: what gets cited and what doesn’t?

Trapp, Jamie
  Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar citation rates: a case study of medical physics and biomedical engineering: what gets cited and what doesn’t? 
Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine
DOI 10.1007/s13246-016-0478-2
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OBJECTIVES
To examine citation trends the journal Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar
METHODOLOGY
Sample
427 articles published in Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine
Design
A list of items published in Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine was generated from a search on Web of Science and the citation count from each of the databases was recorded against each item.the sum total of citations for all articles in the journal in the respective databases were tabulated and compared
Period analyzed:
2007-2014
RESULTS
- The greater number of citations clearly come from Google Scholar, followed by Scopus and then Web of Science - The proportion of articles that have zero citations are 37% for Web of Science, 29% for Scopus, and 19% for Google Scholar - The proportion of articles which have 10 or more citations are 5% for Web of Science, 9% for Scopus, and 17% for Google Scholar - The ratio of Google Scholar cites compared to Scopus is 1,3, and 1,5 if they are compared to the Web of Science is  (Table 1)

CONCLUSIONS

Although there are exceptions, the general trend of the databases is that Google Scholar shows a greater number of citations, followed by Scopus and then Web of Science. 

What this study adds

This study supports the findings of previous studies: Google Scholar has a much broader document and citation coverage than Web of Science and Scopus.