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Counting the citations: a comparison of Web of Science and Google Scholar in the field of business and management

Author

Listed:
  • John Mingers

    (University of Kent)

  • Evangelia A. E. C. G. Lipitakis

    (University of Kent)

Abstract

Assessing the quality of the knowledge produced by business and management academics is increasingly being metricated. Moreover, emphasis is being placed on the impact of the research rather than simply where it is published. The main metric for impact is the number of citations a paper receives. Traditionally this data has come from the ISI Web of Science but research has shown that this has poor coverage in the social sciences. A newer and different source for citations is Google Scholar. In this paper we compare the two on a dataset of over 4,600 publications from three UK Business Schools. The results show that Web of Science is indeed poor in the area of management and that Google Scholar, whilst somewhat unreliable, has a much better coverage. The conclusion is that Web of Science should not be used for measuring research impact in management.

Suggested Citation

  • John Mingers & Evangelia A. E. C. G. Lipitakis, 2010. "Counting the citations: a comparison of Web of Science and Google Scholar in the field of business and management," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 613-625, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:85:y:2010:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-010-0270-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0270-0
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ruimin Ma & Qiangbin Dai & Chaoqun Ni & Xuelu Li, 2009. "An author co-citation analysis of information science in China with Chinese Google Scholar search engine, 2004–2006," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(1), pages 33-46, October.
    2. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "Which h-index? — A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 257-271, February.
    3. Mingers, John & Xu, Fang, 2010. "The drivers of citations in management science journals," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 205(2), pages 422-430, September.
    4. Lokman I. Meho & Kiduk Yang, 2007. "Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of science versus scopus and google scholar," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(13), pages 2105-2125, November.
    5. Anne‐Wil Harzing & Ron van der Wal, 2009. "A Google Scholar h‐index for journals: An alternative metric to measure journal impact in economics and business," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(1), pages 41-46, January.
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