Research impact metrics (e.g. citation counts, h-index) can vary across different resources (e.g. Web of Science™ and Scopus). These differences can be explained in terms of journal titles/focus area of the database, date coverage and more but does not indicate one is better than the other, just different:
- Journal titles
- Both databases index a core group of journal titles that are exactly the same.
- Each database has journal titles that are unique to their database due to focus areas.
- Web of Science™ - science, technology, social sciences and arts and humanities.
- Scopus - physical science, health sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities.
- Date coverage
- Web of Science™ - citation information goes back to 1961.
- Scopus - coverage went back to 1996 when they launched in 2004 but have added additional data to take citations back to 1970 as of 2017.
