Comparing Bibliometric Analysis Using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science Databases

Summary

Literature databases are commonly used to assess publications in a certain subject, discipline, country, or region of the world, a practice known as bibliometric analysis. The current protocol details how to use PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases to do bibliometric analysis.

Abstract

Literature databases (i.e., PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) differ in terms of their coverage, focus, and the tool they provide. PubMed focuses mainly on life sciences and biomedical disciplines, whereas Scopus and Web of Science are multidisciplinary. The protocol described in the current study was used to search for publications from Jordanian authors in the years 2013-2017. In this protocol, how to use each database to conduct this type of search is explained in detail. A Scopus search resulted in the highest number of documents (11,444 documents), followed by a Web of Science search (10,943 documents). PubMed resulted in a smaller number of documents due to its narrower scope and coverage (4,363 documents). The results also show a yearly trend in: (1) the number of publications, (2) the disciplines that have the most publications, (3) the countries of collaboration, and (4) the number of open access publications. In contrast, PubMed has a sophisticated keyword optimization service (i.e., Medical Subject Heading, or MeSH), while both Scopus and Web of Science provide search analysis tools that can produce representative figures. Finally, the features of each database are explained in detail and several indices that can be extracted using the search results are provided. This study provides a base for using literature databases for bibliometric analysis.

Introduction

Classically, researchers have used literature databases to perform literature review for their studies¹. Another use of these literature databases arose at the end of the 19^th century, where researchers analyzed the body of literature, a use that has slowly grown since². In the last few decades, digitizing literature and the formation of online literature databases provided an opportunity to researchers to analyze the body of literature and research performance easily and efficiently. An example would be analyzing the research performance for a document³, a subject⁴

Protocol

NOTE: The following are search methods and an example search for each method is provided. Note that the part related specifically to bibliometric analysis is also supplied.

1. PubMed

1. Choose Advanced Search from PubMed homepage (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed).
2. Enter the desired search term in the search field. Choose the search terms from the medical subject heading (MeSH) database. The following example details how to assess research in "cancer".
   1. Open th.......

Discussion

In this study, the steps through which PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases are used to perform a bibliometric analysis were provided. It was indicated that the friendliest and the easiest tool to use for bibliometric analysis services is Web of Science; however, its drawback is that its services are not available for free. PubMed is devoted for biomedical sciences and is affiliated with several other National Library of Medicine (NLM) tools that can help to optimize analysis of biomedical subjects. Medical Subje.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
	clarivate	N/A	Web of Science provider, where the access was provided by the subscription made by the University of Jordan.
	Elsevier	N/A	Scopus provider, where the access was provided by the subscription made by the University of Jordan.