Abstract

This study compares search results in Google Scholar (GS), Microsoft Academic (MA), Scopus, and Web of Science (WoS) for a set of fifteen business and economics journals, ten of which had impact factors, and five that did not. These results were analyzed to evaluate the relative performance of each database in identifying citations for articles, and to determine whether one source might be preferable to another in different circumstances. Results showed that Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic have nearly the same number of average citations, with GS only slightly higher, and each has twice as many as either Web of Science or Scopus. Even so, higher numbers did not automatically lead to an unequivocal recommendation to use the related databases without considering other aspects of each database, such as how citations are reported in each of these sources and the transparency that is provided in the fee-based databases.

摘要

本研究比较了Google Scholar ( GS )、Microsoft Academic (MA ) 、Scopus和Web of Science ( WoS ) 中 15 种商业和经济期刊的搜索结果，其中 10 种具有影响因子，5 种没有。分析这些结果以评估每个数据库在识别文章引用方面的相对性能，并确定在不同情况下一个来源是否可能比另一个更可取。结果显示，Google Scholar和Microsoft Academic的平均引用次数几乎相同，GS仅略高，并且每个都比Web of Science或Scopus多一倍。即便如此，在不考虑每个数据库的其他方面的情况下，更高的数字并不会自动导致使用相关数据库的明确建议，例如这些来源中的每一个如何报告引文以及收费数据库中提供的透明度。