Comparison between Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and publishers for mislabelled review papers

Abstract

The present study examined the incidence rate of re-views being mislabelled by Scopus, and compared this rate with Web of Science (WoS), PubMed and official websites of publishers. Top 400 cited publications de-fined by Scopus as ‘articles’ were examined. Their contents were evaluated to see if any were actually reviews. These publications were cross-checked in WoS, PubMed and publisher websites to identify the assigned document type labels. Out of the 400 Scopus ‘articles’, 117 were reviews (29.3%). The official web-sites of publishers had 16.0% incidence of mislabelled reviews, which was less than Scopus (29.3%) but more than WoS (14.1%) and PubMed (1.9%).