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Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, Scopus, Dimensions, Web of Science, and OpenCitations' COCI: a multidisciplinary comparison of coverage via citations

2020/04/30 by Alberto Martín‐Martín, Alberto Martín-Martín, Mike Thelwall +2 · 36 citations
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Decision Sciences · #Academic Publishing and Open Access #Academic Writing and Publishing #cs.DL #scientometrics and bibliometrics research

paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03690-4

published as 2021. Scientometrics, 126(1), 871-906 · 40 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables

openalex created_date 2020/05/13 · crossref issued 2020/09/21 · crossref published 2020/09/21 · crossref published-online 2020/09/21 · openalex publication_date 2020/09/21 · crossref created 2020/09/21 · crossref published-print 2021/01/01 · arxiv created 2021/01/30 · arxiv updated 2021/02/02 · crossref deposited 2025/04/08 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

New sources of citation data have recently become available, such as Microsoft Academic, Dimensions, and the OpenCitations Index of CrossRef open DOI-to-DOI citations (COCI). Although these have been compared to the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, or Google Scholar, there is no systematic evidence of their differences across subject categories. In response, this paper investigates 3,073,351 citations found by these six data sources to 2,515 English-language highly-cited documents published in 2006 from 252 subject categories, expanding and updating the largest previous study. Google Scholar found 88% of all citations, many of which were not found by the other sources, and nearly all citations found by the remaining sources (89%-94%). A similar pattern held within most subject categories. Microsoft Academic is the second largest overall (60% of all citations), including 82% of Scopus citations and 86% of Web of Science citations. In most categories, Microsoft Academic found more citations than Scopus and WoS (182 and 223 subject categories, respectively), but had coverage gaps in some areas, such as Physics and some Humanities categories. After Scopus, Dimensions is fourth largest (54% of all citations), including 84% of Scopus citations and 88% of WoS citations. It found more citations than Scopus in 36 categories, more than WoS in 185, and displays some coverage gaps, especially in the Humanities. Following WoS, COCI is the smallest, with 28% of all citations. Google Scholar is still the most comprehensive source. In many subject categories Microsoft Academic and Dimensions are good alternatives to Scopus and WoS in terms of coverage.

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