The h‐index for countries in Web of Science and Scopus
| Date | 07 August 2009 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520910985756 |
| Published date | 07 August 2009 |
| Pages | 831-837 |
| Author | Péter Jacsó |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
SAVVY SEARCHING
The h-index for countries in
Web of Science and Scopus
Pe
´ter Jacso
´
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the results of recent experiments in
determining the h-index at the country level for the 10 Ibero-American countries of South America.
Design/methodology/approach – The three citation index components (Science Citation Index,
Social Science Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index) of the Web of Science system
of Thomson-Reuters and the Scopus database of Elsevier are used to gauge the comparability of
the h-indexes reported by the two systems.
Findings – The results show that in spite of the significant differences in the content of the two
databases in terms of their source base and the extent of cited reference enhancement of records,
the rank correlation of the ten countries based on the h-index values returned by Web of Science
and Scopus is very high.
Originality/value – For this sample, in spite of differences between WoS and Scopus in the
number of papers from each country, the rank position of the countries by the h-index is almost the
same. There is only a single rank position difference – Scopus rank Argentina second and Chile
third, while the order is the reverse in WoS. This reconfirms the robustness of the h-index at the
country level.
Keywords Publishing, Databases, South America
Paper type Viewpoint
Originally, the concept of the h-index was developed to measure the scholarly
publishing productivity and impact of individual researchers through a singl e
indicator. It became widely popular for the simplicity of the concept, and its use was
extended to research groups, institutions and journals. This paper discusses the results
of my recent experiments in determining the h-index at the country level for the ten
Ibero-American countries of South America. The three citation index components
(Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation
Index) of the Web of Science system of Thomson-Reuters and the Scopus database of
Elsevier were used to gauge the comparability of the h-indexes reported by the two
systems. The experiments covered the 1981 to 2007 publication years as the time
period. The citation window was extended to mid-January 2009. The results show that
in spite of the significant differences in the content of the two databases in terms of
their source base and the extent of cited reference enhancement of records, the rank
correlation of the ten countries based on the h-index values returned by Web of Science
and Scopus was very high.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
The h-index
831
Online Information Review
Vol. 33 No. 4, 2009
pp. 831-837
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520910985756
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