Oregon State University Libraries' Web of Science vs. Scopus Qualitative Comparison Public Deposited

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http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/technical_reports/41687p076

A report conducted at Oregon State University Libraries in Spring 2017 on the features of the Web of Science and Scopus databases from an advanced researcher's point of view.

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  • In Spring 2017, I was tasked with analyzing and providing feedback on the Web of Science and Scopus databases from an advanced researcher point of view. At Oregon State University (OSU), we currently have a subscription to Web of Science, and we wanted to see if switching to Scopus might be feasible from a number of different angles. The angle that I explored was whether advanced researchers might experience a qualitative difference when using one of these databases as compared to the other. To get at that question, I created two core searches for each of five disciplines that are most representative of the scholarship of OSU researchers. For each core search I performed a basic, relevance, advanced, and author search in both Web of Science and Scopus. A total of forty searches were performed. For each of those searches, I tracked a variety of factors that are important to searchers including overall number of results, date range of results, number of results with full-text available at OSU, perceived relevance of results, source types represented, and the number of overlapping results between the two databases. In addition, I observed interface features and interface similarities and differences between the two databases. Based on these searches, I determined that both Web of Science and Scopus provide highly relevant results on a wide disciplinary range of topics, but the results from the two databases are different. Both databases provide faceted searching, advanced analysis of results, and researcher metrics. Overall, either database would be a beneficial research tool for OSU researchers regardless of discipline. This report details the search strategies used, along with the results of the searches by discipline. A link to the raw data is included for those wishing to explore the data further.
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  • description.provenance : Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-06T19:52:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1536 bytes, checksum: df76b173e7954a20718100d078b240a8 (MD5) Web of Science vs Scopus Report.pdf: 636995 bytes, checksum: 709bf3f16b485d7e653b76893c4f4deb (MD5)
  • description.provenance : Approved for entry into archive by Steven Van Tuyl(steve.vantuyl@oregonstate.edu) on 2017-09-06T19:52:00Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1536 bytes, checksum: df76b173e7954a20718100d078b240a8 (MD5) Web of Science vs Scopus Report.pdf: 636995 bytes, checksum: 709bf3f16b485d7e653b76893c4f4deb (MD5)
  • description.provenance : Submitted by Hannah Rempel (hannah.rempel@oregonstate.edu) on 2017-08-25T17:54:22Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1536 bytes, checksum: df76b173e7954a20718100d078b240a8 (MD5) Web of Science vs Scopus Report.pdf: 636995 bytes, checksum: 709bf3f16b485d7e653b76893c4f4deb (MD5)

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