IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v10y2016i1p174-182.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The museum of errors/horrors in Scopus

Author

Listed:
  • Franceschini, Fiorenzo
  • Maisano, Domenico
  • Mastrogiacomo, Luca

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that the Scopus bibliometric database is probably less accurate than one thinks. As a further evidence of this fact, this paper presents a structured collection of several weird typologies of database errors, which can therefore be classified as horrors. Some of them concern the incorrect indexing of so-called Online-First paper, duplicate publications, and the missing/incorrect indexing of references. A crucial point is that most of these errors could probably be avoided by adopting some basic data checking systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Franceschini, Fiorenzo & Maisano, Domenico & Mastrogiacomo, Luca, 2016. "The museum of errors/horrors in Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 174-182.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:10:y:2016:i:1:p:174-182
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2015.11.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157715301462
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2015.11.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Domenico Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo, 2015. "Influence of omitted citations on the bibliometric statistics of the major Manufacturing journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 1083-1122, June.
    2. Joost C. F. Winter & Amir A. Zadpoor & Dimitra Dodou, 2014. "The expansion of Google Scholar versus Web of Science: a longitudinal study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1547-1565, February.
    3. Franceschini, Fiorenzo & Maisano, Domenico & Mastrogiacomo, Luca, 2014. "Scientific journal publishers and omitted citations in bibliometric databases: Any relationship?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 751-765.
    4. Anne-Wil Harzing, 2013. "Document categories in the ISI Web of Knowledge: Misunderstanding the Social Sciences?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(1), pages 23-34, January.
    5. Valderrama-Zurián, Juan-Carlos & Aguilar-Moya, Remedios & Melero-Fuentes, David & Aleixandre-Benavent, Rafael, 2015. "A systematic analysis of duplicate records in Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 570-576.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    2. Paul Donner, 2017. "Document type assignment accuracy in the journal citation index data of Web of Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 219-236, October.
    3. Franceschini, Fiorenzo & Maisano, Domenico & Mastrogiacomo, Luca, 2016. "Empirical analysis and classification of database errors in Scopus and Web of Science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 933-953.
    4. Shirley Ainsworth & Jane M. Russell, 2018. "Has hosting on science direct improved the visibility of Latin American scholarly journals? A preliminary analysis of data quality," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(3), pages 1463-1484, June.
    5. Thelwall, Mike, 2018. "Microsoft Academic automatic document searches: Accuracy for journal articles and suitability for citation analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9.
    6. Massimo Aria & Michelangelo Misuraca & Maria Spano, 2020. "Mapping the Evolution of Social Research and Data Science on 30 Years of Social Indicators Research," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 803-831, June.
    7. Shuo Xu & Liyuan Hao & Xin An & Dongsheng Zhai & Hongshen Pang, 2019. "Types of DOI errors of cited references in Web of Science with a cleaning method," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1427-1437, September.
    8. Moed, Henk F. & Bar-Ilan, Judit & Halevi, Gali, 2016. "A new methodology for comparing Google Scholar and Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 533-551.
    9. Sergio Copiello, 2019. "The open access citation premium may depend on the openness and inclusiveness of the indexing database, but the relationship is controversial because it is ambiguous where the open access boundary lie," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 995-1018, November.
    10. Lopreite, Milena & Misuraca, Michelangelo & Puliga, Michelangelo, 2023. "An analysis of the thematic evolution of ageing and healthcare expenditure using word embedding: A scoping review of policy implications," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(PB).
    11. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    12. Michael Gusenbauer, 2019. "Google Scholar to overshadow them all? Comparing the sizes of 12 academic search engines and bibliographic databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(1), pages 177-214, January.
    13. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Domenico Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo, 2016. "Do Scopus and WoS correct “old” omitted citations?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 321-335, May.
    14. Sándor Soós & Zsófia Vida & András Schubert, 2018. "Long-term trends in the multidisciplinarity of some typical natural and social sciences, and its implications on the SSH versus STM distinction," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 795-822, March.
    15. Christophe Boudry & Ghislaine Chartron, 2017. "Availability of digital object identifiers in publications archived by PubMed," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1453-1469, March.
    16. Zhentao Liang & Jin Mao & Kun Lu & Gang Li, 2021. "Finding citations for PubMed: a large-scale comparison between five freely available bibliographic data sources," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9519-9542, December.
    17. David I Stern, 2014. "High-Ranked Social Science Journal Articles Can Be Identified from Early Citation Information," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-11, November.
    18. Carmen de la Cruz-Lovera & Alberto-Jesus Perea-Moreno & José Luis de la Cruz-Fernández & Francisco G. Montoya & Alfredo Alcayde & Francisco Manzano-Agugliaro, 2019. "Analysis of Research Topics and Scientific Collaborations in Energy Saving Using Bibliometric Techniques and Community Detection," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-23, May.
    19. Thed Leeuwen & Rodrigo Costas & Clara Calero-Medina & Martijn Visser, 2013. "The role of editorial material in bibliometric research performance assessments," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(2), pages 817-828, May.
    20. Martín-Martín, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Thelwall, Mike & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1160-1177.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:10:y:2016:i:1:p:174-182. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.