We're pleased to announce a new addition to our databases list: Sciverse Scopus. Scopus is a large interdisciplinary database that covers the gamut of scholarly publication. It also provides some nice tools to let you see which articles cite the paper that you are looking at, compare the prominence of different journals by looking at citation patterns, and calculate metrics like the h-index. Sounds a lot like Web of Science? Yes! You can do a lot of similar things with the two databases, though they have very different interfaces and search different content. For example:
The Web of Science record for the 1976 article by Raskin and Knittle entitled "Ice-cream headache and orthostatic symptoms in patients with migraine", from the journal Headache, shows that it has been cited by 44 other articles. Finding the record in Scopus for the same article shows only 28 citations. One reason: although you can find articles in Scopus from decades ago, citation information is only included from 1996 onwards. So Web of Science can tell you that N. Bird cited Raskin's article in 1992, but Scopus can't.
It's not only the different citation dates that are different between these two databases though: because they don't index all the same journals, you'll see differences in citation counts even in recent articles. For example, N.M. Pugno's 2007 Journal of Physics - Condensed Matter article, "Towards a Spiderman suit: large invisible cables and self-cleaning releasable superadhesive materials" shows more citations in Web of Science, while A. Taylor's 2006 Academy of Management Journal article "Superman or Fantastic Four? Knowledge and experience in innnovative teams" shows more citations in Scopus.
There are also some articles that you'll only find in one database or the other: only Web of Science can give you citation information for Hume, M (2005) "Unsinkable - Is Loretta Lynn country music's Scarlett O'Hara?" Journal of Country Music 24(2):16-23, while only Scopus can tell you about Ramakrishnan, PA (2004) "'Unsinkable' boat has foam centre" Reinforced Plastics 48(7).
The moral? Try both, and decide which you prefer. If you need citation information from before 1996, Web of Science is the way to go. If you don't, Scopus has an interface that many people find more intuitive, plus a very handy algorithm that helps with those difficult author searches (maybe another blog post on this later!). And, if you want to be as comprehensive as possible in creating a list of who's citing an article, use both, as they'll each give you slightly different results (I'd suggest adding Google Scholar to your search strategy as well!).
As with all our resources, please let us know if you have questions or comments. Happy searching!
