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A comparison of bibliometric indicators for computer science scholars and journals on Web of Science and Google Scholar

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Abstract

Given the current availability of different bibliometric indicators and of production and citation data sources, the following two questions immediately arise: do the indicators’ scores differ when computed on different data sources? More importantly, do the indicator-based rankings significantly change when computed on different data sources? We provide a case study for computer science scholars and journals evaluated on Web of Science and Google Scholar databases. The study concludes that Google scholar computes significantly higher indicators’ scores than Web of Science. Nevertheless, citation-based rankings of both scholars and journals do not significantly change when compiled on the two data sources, while rankings based on the h index show a moderate degree of variation.

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Notes

  1. http://scholar.google.com.

  2. http://scientific.thomson.com/products/wos/.

  3. Available at http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Udine, Via delle Scienze 206, 33100, Udine, Italy

    Massimo Franceschet

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  1. Massimo Franceschet
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Correspondence to Massimo Franceschet.

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Franceschet, M. A comparison of bibliometric indicators for computer science scholars and journals on Web of Science and Google Scholar. Scientometrics 83, 243–258 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0021-2

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