Citation Coverage of SciFinder Scholar
In 1999, Chemical Abstracts Service unveiled citation searching in its SciFinder Scholar software. With SciFinder Scholar and Science Citation Index both now available for citation searching, this study by Katherin Whitley compares the duplication and uniqueness of citing references for works of chemistry researchers for the years 1999-2001.
"Analysis of SciFinder Scholar and Web of Science Citation Searches"
by Katherine M. Whitley,
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(14):1210-1215 (December 2002)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.10192 [requires subscription]
The two indexes cover very similar source material, so one would expect the citation results to be very similar. This article's analysis of SciFinder Scholar and Web of Knowledge (Science Citation Index) shows some important differences as the databases are currently offered. Authors using citation counts as measures of scientific productivity should take note of the unexpected gaps in coverage found in both databases.
Comparison of citation searching in SciFinder Scholar and Science Citation Index in this study showed that relying on either index alone leads to incomplete results when trying to obtain citation totals for individual authors. According to Whitley, neither index is adequate on its own for a comprehensive search. SciFinder Scholar covers slightly more of the chemical literature if searched by itself, but still misses an estimated 17% of the citations found in Science Citation Index. Conversely, researchers using only Science Citation Index to citations to their work would miss an estimated 23% covered only in SciFinder Scholar.
One reason given for the 17% unique references found in SciFinder Scholar might be due to the fact that it covers more chemistry journals than Science Citation Index, including more specialized niche journals. Conversely, a reason for unique references in Science Citation Index might be that it covers more journals where multidisciplinary chemistry articles are published -- i.e., journals that are marginally relevant to most chemistry researchers, but important to those whose studies are multidisciplinary in nature.
Posted by Tom on September 23, 2003
