Comparison and analysis of the citedness scores in web of science and google scholar

Abstract

An increasing number of online information services calculate and report the citedness score of the source documents and provide a link to the group of records of the citing documents. The citedness score depends on the breadth of source coverage, and the ability of the software to identify the cited documents correctly. The citedness score may be a good indicator of the influence of the documents retrieved. Google Scholar gives the most prominence to the citedness score by using it in ranking the search results. Tests have been conducted to compare the individual and aggregate citedness scores of items in the results list of various known-item and subject searches in Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar (GS). This paper presents the findings of the comparison and analysis of the individual and aggregate citation scores calculated by WoS and GS for the papers published in 22 volumes of the Asian Pacific Journal of Allergy and Immunology (APJAI). The aggregate citedness score was 1,355 for the 675 papers retrieved by WoS, and 595 for 680 papers found in GS. The findings of the analysis and comparison of tests, and the reasons for the significant limitations of Google Scholar in calculating and reporting the citedness scores are presented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.